


our love was built outside these walls

by Shenanigans



Category: DCU (Comics), Green Arrow (Comics), Green Lantern (Comics), Red Hood/Arsenal (Comics)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Connor Hawke, Casual dom Roy Harper, Happy Ending, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Threesome - M/M/M, dcaspecweek, possessive hissy Jason Todd, pun intended, so much sex, whole lotta smut y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:13:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27284734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shenanigans/pseuds/Shenanigans
Summary: Connor Hawke loves Kyle in a clean simple way, but he can't help but think it's not enough. He can see Kyle look, can feel Kyle need more than he knows how to give. He can't find the touch, the words, to make the mess Kyle needs to be.He asks the people he trusts for help.
Relationships: Connor Hawke/Kyle Rayner, Roy Harper/Jason Todd, Roy Harper/Kyle Rayner/Jason Todd
Comments: 21
Kudos: 69
Collections: DC Aspec Week





	our love was built outside these walls

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very personal story to me. I do not my experiences and understanding of asexuality are in any way the entire ace experience. I've written Connor as asexual, homo-romantic, and sex neutral. I hope that these words find you well. I wanted to write a happy ending for an ace character, however strange this happy ending may seem. I wrote this as a humble offering for the DC ASPEC WEEK because I had never seen something like that before and, fuck man, it gives me such joy to see people spreading awareness.
> 
> AN: while this is a story about an asexual character, there is an exceptional amount of smut below. Be warned.

Connor Hawke was chatting amiably in Mandarin with a woman in a pink smock apron at the farmer's market, smile genuine and small like an afterthought as he shook his head and laughed at her response. Connor was blushing; he did this when he was embarrassed by a bluntly forward compliment. He was the kind of beautiful that people gravitated to, brown skinned, green eyed, and brimming with a delicate sort of kindness. He kept his blond curls cut with a hard line part that was growing out of a short fade. He always let them grow out between cuts. Today, he’d trapped them under a maroon knit cap, but a few were escaping along his browline. Kyle almost reached out to trace the shift of vein at the back of his hand, fascinated as always by Connor’s helpless charm. 

The woman continued to chatter. Kyle smiled when he realized both she and he were studying the shape of Connor’s eyes; Kyle could almost sketch the beautiful teardrop curve with one twist of his wrist. His boyfriend was built for smiles. They bloomed over the fullness of his mouth, showcasing straight white teeth and the dimples that pulled a deep line between the cut of his cheekbones and the sharp line of his jaw. 

Kyle should’ve been used to this by now, but he was standing on the sidewalk, mesh bags filled with vegetables looped over his forearms with his hands shoved into the pockets of his bomber jacket. He was staring.

Connor Hawke glanced over at him, raising one eyebrow in a question that Kyle winked his answer. He didn't really think it was appropriate to explain, _aloud_ , that he was trying very hard not to pop wood in public because Connor was doing something as innocuous as smiling in a cream, cable knit sweater while he touched an apple with his long-fingered hands.

The small woman in the pink paisley apron, straight black hair, and demanding body language turned to look at where Kyle was standing. She narrowed her eyes, leaning towards Connor while she raked her gaze over Kyle. He almost brushed his palm over his hair to make sure it wasn’t sticking up in the back. He gave her a watery smile. She muttered something quick and staccato, it sounded biting and unimpressed, but Connor flushed, eyes going wide before he managed a soft response. The woman huffed once, put both hands on her slim hips, and stepped up onto something to point at Kyle. She snapped out a string of Mandarin and nodded once, before clapping her hands loudly and stepping back down. She turned to Connor.

"Seventeen dollars." She stuck out a hand and Connor hurried to fish out his wallet, paying with a crisp twenty. 

"What was that?" Kyle asked, glancing back over his shoulder as Connor steered them out of the stall and back to wander at his quiet pace through the tangle of booths and stalls.

"It's not important."

"Seemed important," Kyle handed the bags in his left hand back to Connor so he could sling an arm around his waist to reel him close. He smelled like warm green: tea tree oil and something rich like musky incense. Kyle turned into him, nose nudging lightly at his jaw before pressing a kiss to his cheek. He wanted to tug at the deep red beanie that was covering Connor's light hair, wanted to feel the ripple of his curls against his palm, wanted to hear Connor's mellow voice hitch slightly on his name. Kyle pulled back sharply.

"I am happy with you, so it was an empty threat," Connor answered, watching the cement in front of him before slanting a look at Kyle from under his thick lashes. He was flushed, just the faint tint of color over his cheeks. He was shorter than Kyle, broader through the shoulders with a trim waist and strong thighs hidden behind the faded well-loved denim, corded calves, and oddly delicate ankles tucked into the tidy canvas slip on sneakers. He wore one beaded wood bracelet and sunshine like it was tailored for him. 

Kyle was staring again. "I'm used to being threatened."

Connor's head tipped back and his throat moved when he laughed, bright and open. Kyle could feel the stupid smile on his own face, could feel the way he was always just gawking, awkward, and a little stunned around Connor. 

"Sure, laugh at my fate. I see how it is," he muttered, pretending umbridge.

Connor reached, threading his fingers into Kyle's and turned to watch him with that sparkling gaze, the mottled green of something ancient and immovable. Kyle thought of the banyan trees that would shove roots like spikes slowly through entire cities, swallowing them with a slow inevitable sprawl. He was being devoured by this gaze, by this feeling, and all he could do was stare and open his arms. "Someone has to," Connor said, clear and teasing. 

"I'm never letting you hang out with Guy again. He's taught you horrible things."

"My father said much the same," Connor grinned, his quick long dimple winking in his cheek and Kyle wanted to drop the bags and put his thumbs into the groove of it, to pull Connor close and lick into his mouth, to sink into the plush fullness of his lips. He wanted Connor to forget the world and focus on _him_. He squeezed his knuckles instead.

"Gross. That's gross. I am nothing like your Dad. I hate this comparison."

"I am sure Oliver would agree," Connor answered, turning to keep walking, thumb stroking over Kyle's knuckles in an absent soothe. He was always soothing Kyle, soft touches to ground him. A hand sliding along the side of his neck to trace the edge of his hairline after a haircut, like he was learning the new paler line of skin again. A hand at the small of his back. A hand at his knee. The push of long boned toes against his ankle at the table. The meditative sweep of soapy hands along his sides, over his hips, back up to spread over his shoulders. Connor was mapping him in increments, fingers sure and capable. 

Kyle had pulled his hand around his hip in the shower, pulled his palm to press against him, aching and hard. He'd regretted it. "Please?"

Connor had pressed against his back and tried, curling his fingers and stroking along his length. Kyle had gripped his fingers, shivering and flushed, hot water pounding against his chest, the thrum of his heart, the way his whole body seemed to tense at the feel of Connor's callouses against him. He'd used his hand quickly, rushing and stumbling, panting and turning to smear kisses to Connor's jaw, his neck, any bit of skin he could find. He'd felt wild, cupped between something delicate and beautifully carved, like he was spoiling a silence, crashing into a prayer, breaking something meant to be kept closed. "Oh fuck, please. _Tighter_. Connor, just... just like that."

He'd panted, slapping a hand against the tile, other hand white-knuckled and desperate to keep Connor's fingers around him as he moaned through his orgasm. He’d fallen back into Connor’s body, into the warm careful embrace, and swallowed, finding his way back to himself. Connor had held him, hand out to rinse the mess Kyle had made of him away. "Do you want me to-?"

" _Kyle_ ," Connor had a way of accidentally making his name sound like a soft sad no. "I'm fine. Let me clean you up."

Kyle had closed his eyes, nodded, and ducked forward to hide his face in the spray of water. He felt Connor's fingers trace over the line of his spine like a question, like an apology. He'd turned, flipping his hair back from his face and just ducked to kiss him, the water clear and clean on their mouths. "I love you."

Connor had cupped his jaw between his fingers and kissed him back. "And I you."

"What's left?" Connor's voice interrupted his thoughts and Kyle watched him turn, walking backwards with their linked hands between them. He moved like liquid and Kyle could only try not to trip over his own feet and follow. 

"What?"

"On our list?" Connor tilted his head, scratching at the edge of his jaw. He was a little scruffy, a pale stubble glittering when the autumn light slid down the sides of the buildings or through the riot of red and orange leaves of the maples lining the edge of the park. He held the mesh bag up. 

"Oh, uh." Kyle didn't want to let go of Connor's fingers and lifted his arm to sling the bag into the crook of his elbow as he patted himself down to find his phone. Connor waited, patient. Connor was too patient with him. "Did we get the... farro?" He blinked. "What's farro? Are you sure we can't just buy take out? I love tamales. _Roy_ loves tamales. Jason can pretend he likes spicy things and I can laugh at him."

"Because I want to cook for you all." Connor shrugged. "I like to do it."

"And you like to watch Roy make faces at vegetarian food."

" _And_ I like to watch Roy make faces at vegetarian food," Connor agreed, his smile going sly. "Perhaps," he continued, wetting his lips and ducking close. Kyle almost kissed him, almost hooked his finger into the pocket of his jeans to tug him tight and hope to eat a moan from his mouth. He widened his eyes instead, tucking his phone away. "We should buy some hot sauce?"

“The _hottest_.” Kyle gave in, kissing him once. "I love you. You are a menace."

Connor just managed to look smug, eyebrows up and mouth dropped open on a sly smile. "I have no idea what you are talking about. I am the good one."

*

Jason was mewling, an impossible strung out sound that twisted in his throat while he wrenched his head to the side, eyes half closed and hair curling damp at his temples. This was the moment that Roy savored; it was the moment he knew everything was going to be okay. Jason’s skin was flushed, a warm glow of pink that spilled over his cheeks, down his throat, and over the breadth of his chest. Jason Todd was a powerhouse, thickly built with sinewy muscle and layered battle scars. He was face down on the bed, arms bound in glowing green where they were pulled over his head and held against the headboard. He trembled, flushed and noising as a green construct moved aimlessly to stroke over his hair, his cheek, his mouth. It was mesmerizing, the long muscled line of his spine, the flicker as he shivered and tugged helplessly at the bindings glowing green at his wrists and his ankles. 

"That's it," Roy breathed, voice firm and easy even as his lungs went tight at the sight, heart thudding hot in his veins. "He wants more." 

“"He can take it,” he told the man standing naked next to him. Roy didn’t move, he didn't have to. The chair sat at the left facing edge of their bed. It was a simple folding chair, the metal seat warm under him. He could hear the slight scratch of the metal rivets in his jeans when he shifted. He’d placed it here with purpose, just close enough that he could reach out and touch Jason's mouth, trace the line of his spine, curve his palm over the swell of his ass. It was close enough that Jason could beg and he could know Roy was denying him. "Can _you_?" 

Roy flicked his eyes to where Kyle's gaze was focused, jaw tight and determined as he forced focus, the detail on the constructs he'd built rippling once, hazy before pulling clear and crisp like he'd smoothed the edges with his hands. Kyle Rayner needed something very specific, needed something that Roy could wedge slowly into him, caught between Jason's breathless need and his entire focus. Roy moved then, touching the back of his knuckle to the underside of Kyle's dick, stroking along the hard length.

*

“Don’t let him fuckin’ fool you,” Roy snorted, pointing around his bottle of Mexican coke at Kyle as Connor snagged the plate from in front of him. “He can take it.”

Connor was clearing the table, stacking their thick colorful plates on his palm as he circled past Roy to take Jason’s dish. Jason collected his dirty flatware, nodding an absent ‘thank you’ to him when Connor plucked the plate from his hand, but he was focused on where Roy held his gaze. 

Jason’s smirk tilted specific and teasing. “You making moves, Harper?”

Roy wet his lips and Connor knew that the sip he took from his bottled coke was too slow, too purposeful to be anything but a deliberate tease. “Gonna move _something_ , Jaybird.” 

He was learning to recognize flirting; it was a slow and laborious process. His family was a riot of charisma and easy charm. He’d been steeped in it, learning, but only half understanding it. Roy radiated a simple sexuality. It shimmered around him heady as the haze of heat off asphalt in summer. Connor knew he was handsome, cocksure and a ruddy collection of red hair, freckles, and taunts. Roy was the unexpected sort of handsome, the kind that stumbled home in the dark and went brilliant when touched. Connor had seen it catch people, pull them to melt into his smile, into his hands, into his bed. 

The table was a crisp rectangle with a split right down the center that could hold another leaf of expansion. It was covered in the mess of the dinner, bits of crumb, bunched up napkins, and the scraps of cooked carrots Kyle had picked out of the vegetable farrotto. Roy and Kyle sat opposite of each other, safer with Connor fielding Jason’s brutally deliberate gaze and sly words than his partner. He would only shake his head and smile into the next bite, but Kyle couldn’t help but respond, to fight back, to lean into the endless barbed taunts. Roy would watch them bicker with a small doting smile and Connor always felt close to him in those stolen glances - knowing what that kind of love felt like from the inside as he watched Kyle’s head rock back before he bullied back into the lively argument. 

Now, Kyle was trapped, eyes flicking between where Roy and Jason were nearly visibly thrumming sex at each other, held still only by the company and the table between them. 

Connor didn’t want to interrupt, didn’t want to break the magnetic spell. He moved on silent feet, muting his presence by rote.

He watched Kyle, always finding him like the center of a target, practiced and calming, as he gathered the silverware. Kyle looked hungry, hazel eyes narrowed and mouth slightly open. He leaned forward on his forearms, hair a mussed tangle of thick black waves. He radiated focus, eyes tracking in the constant skimming gaze that Connor knew felt like a touch when it was turned on him, that artist's gaze tracing the edges of him. It felt like a meditation, like a poem, when Kyle collected him in parts, forming and holding him cupped in his mind’s eye before he ever touched pencil to paper. It was love and devotion set in motion like *enso*. 

The evening was sitting low in the kitchen, the glow from the white pendant lamp over the table catching the soft natural tan of Kyle’s skin, making Roy’s hair glow. Their kitchen was simple, butcher’s block countertops and stainless steel appliances. Connor’s favorite was the table - a well-loved, beautiful wood set under a single white metal lamp that didn’t hang straight from the ceiling. Kyle had installed it himself, muttering in Spanish while Connor held the ladder. The chairs were the same soft walnut and the grain picked up the golden ache of the moment, smooth and carefully polished. There was a simple woven grass mat on the cement floor that defined the dining area within the open kitchen. 

They’d found an apartment on the top floor of a wide set converted industrial building, the windows long and stretching from floor to ceiling in five spaces on three walls. The brick outside still held the flaking logo of the sewing machine factory it had been once long ago. It was subdued, Connor’s simple creams and tans mixed with Kyle’s relaxed push of color, mixing into the negative spaces Connor always made for him. Connor was used to simplicity and Kyle was a delicious fascinating kind of intricate.

Kyle Rayner was beautiful, a stunning collection of broad shoulders, genteel dexterous hands, wrists like the flicker of bird wings, and a riotous smile that warmed Connor’s chest with something pure and white. Connor would watch him in the mornings, the shadow of his lashes laying straight and thick against his cheeks, the golden tone of his skin made for the sticky dawn light. He’d trace over his hair, the sleep warm weight of his curls, the stubble on his jaw, the tickle of chest hair, and the soft catch of his leg hair against the sole of Connor’s foot where they were tangled. He was dancing bachata in bare feet, hands firm as he led Connor around the kitchen. He was paint-splatters and marker marks. He had brought blue plates and green glasses and yellow enamel silverware. He was decorating Connor’s life with touches of brass and gold. Kyle brought newsprint and *conte* crayon. He littered the flat surfaces with small palettes of paint left to sit aside when he had to go tactile and look with his hands. 

Connor loved when he looked; he only wished he knew how to answer it, like a question in a language he knew but a dialect he had never heard. Connor loved Kyle as simply and cleanly as an empty bowl. He felt alive when there was music in the empty space inside himself he’d left for Kyle to occupy. He loved when those green-brown eyes were narrowed, loved the swollen black of his pupils hiding behind the thick, straight black lashes. He knew intimately that Kyle’s desire tinted his eyes nearly golden.

Connor loved the look and hated his lack of language to answer. 

He floundered, trying to make the right sounds, the right shape of his mouth when touches tipped to hunger. Desire for Kyle, for the entire world, seemed inevitable. Kyle followed his eyes with his fingers, tripping into touch like an accident. Connor knew the taste of it when Kyle would hum a needy sound and push into their warm, soft-mouthed kisses. He could hear the creak of the couch when Kyle pushed him (always so gentle, so careful) into the cushions and rolled his hips against him. Connor would go pliant, letting Kyle push his hands under his clothes, let him smear wanton sounds to his throat. Connor would touch the back of Kyle’s neck, touch down the twisting rutting line of his spine. He would push his hands and hold him, passive and patient. Kyle would go flushed and hot under Connor’s hands, frantic and apologetic as he rubbed against Connor’s thigh greedily. 

Kyle’s eyes were gold in the kitchen light as he watched Jason and Roy bask in their own sort of electric heat.

“That a fact?” Jason sounded like a purr, like he’d forgotten the company. He was watching Roy with electric eyes under long lashes, eyes made for bedrooms and promises in the dark. Jason watched people like he knew a secret, closed off and carefully crafted.

Connor loved the fierce vulnerable devotion that would crackle across Kyle’s face before he came with Connor’s name in his mouth. Connor hated the guilt that followed when he panted in the spent aftermath. He hated the way Kyle would frown down between them, at the sticky mess in his sweatpants and then hide his face in Connor’s neck. He didn’t want to know what apologies sounded like in breathless Spanish against his jaw. He wanted to be what Kyle needed. He wanted Kyle to have anything he could want. He wished he knew how to be more, to give _more_ , but he was only ever completely himself. 

Kyle would whisper it was enough. Connor knew it wasn’t.

“Be good and find out, babe,” Roy’s voice continued, tone low with promise, and Connor held his breath, feeling like an intruder on something intensely private.

“It’s more fun when I’m bad,” Jason replied, voice an equally charged heat, and the table rattled as he spread his knees, bumping the table leg as he leaned into a deeper sprawl like a dare. Kyle’s eyes were flicking between the two, a slow flush rising on his cheeks before he glanced to where Connor was picking up the fork from his plate. Connor hated the desperate want there that sank under something almost sorrowfully repentant as Kyle frowned at the table. Connor wanted Kyle’s mouth to find a different shape. 

“Gives you something to do,” Jason said.

“Right here, guys. Get a room.” Kyle closed his eyes and sipped his beer.

Jason’s smirk deepened and he rolled his head to hand that same molten look to Kyle. “Say pretty please.”

“You want a fuckin’ cherry on top too?” Kyle snarked. 

“Now, that’s an idea,” Roy snickered, moving a hand under the table and smirking at the way Jason’s breath hitched. The Mexican coke was sweating, a small puddle of condensation cuddling against the base. Kyle flushed and took another sip. “Are we pro-cherry?”

“I could be convinced.”

“I do enjoy convincing you.”

“Jesus, guys,” Kyle’s voice sounded thin. 

Connor knew that his voice went husky soft, stretched taut at the edges when he was hard. He swallowed, looking between the three men at the kitchen table: Roy leaned to the right, Jason to his left, close and intertwined with Kyle facing both, hands flat on the table as his gaze continued that long looping trace, like he was memorizing this moment to commit to paper, to make permanent. 

(Connor knew about the drawer of drawings, of open mouths and hard cocks, of the thick lines of knuckles curled in a bruising grip, the dimples left yearning in the shading of skin, and the flushed faces squirming in graphite. There were pages of tight peaked breasts, the folds of a woman’s sex, the line of a neck thrown back in ecstasy. He had stared at the shapes of sex that Kyle had drawn, over and over and over. He’d seen the amorphous shapes stretching lips wide, fucking into mouths. He had seen his own face looking back at him from an angle that meant he’d been on his knees. He’d seen the drawings of bindings, of constructs, of darker wants, deeper yearning. Connor hadn’t meant to look, but he needed to know. He needed to know about those fantasies Kyle was forever trying to protect him from, to keep from him, tucked away like Connor would leave him for wanting, for needing, for-)

“He needs convincing,” Roy replied, voice helplessly fond under the rough tint of arousal. Roy’s face was mostly made of angles, broken nose, crooked tooth, quick deep smile lines, sharp jaw, sharp eyes, sharp chin. He softened for Jason, smoothed with an open affection. Connor was aware of the soft sound of his hand on Jason’s denim clad thigh, a slow decadent back and forth.

“Still bitter about the no knives rule,” Jason muttered, sulking under that rich tangle of dark curls that caught red highlights in sunlight. He almost sounded petulant even as he shook his head and reached for his beer. “It was _one_ time.”

“I did say that, didn’t I? That seems very unfair of me.”

“Knives?” Kyle’s voice had hit a strange pitch and Connor turned from where he was stacking the plates in the sink. Kyle stared angrily down at the neck of his beer. “Isn’t that... dangerous.”

“See, you’re just convincing him that I’m right.” Roy told Jason as he leaned forward, biting his bottom lip and waiting for Jason to roll his eyes and kiss him, quick and automatic.

“Don’t worry, Kyle,” Jason snorted when he leaned back again. “We’re very careful.”

“He’s got serious knife skills,” Roy agreed, kicking his chair back on two legs, folding a leg to rest a knee against the edge of the table, and pointing at Jason before snagging his coke to sip as Connor set a new beer on the table for Kyle. The bottles clattered slightly when he fumbled and stilled them quickly, before taking the empty bottles away to rinse and put in the recycling. “Good hands.”

“You keep me around for a reason.”

“That’s only one. I can think of a few others.” The table was almost clear and Connor moved to finish; he was ready to scrub and clean, to lose himself in the act. It would drown everything out and let him step adroitly out of his discomfort.

“Oh yeah?” Jason’s brow arched as he wet his lips slowly. “Enlighten me.”

Roy winked. “Say pretty please.” 

Connor ducked his gaze, plucking the last dish, a heavy clear casserole with a few bits of vegetable still baked to the edge, from the center of the table, embarrassed slightly by the heat and promise that lingered in the held gaze. He hurried away from the table, crossing back to the sink on quick feet. 

“Hey, do you need help?” Kyle asked as he stood. The chair skidded, noisy on the cement behind him. He heard Kyle step close, felt his fingers curl at his hips with a tug before he touched his forehead to the nape of his neck. Kyle kept his hips a step back, hiding. Connor frowned harder, scratching at a bit of farro baked onto the pan as Kyle’s arms curled around his waist. “You okay?”

“I am fine. I promise.” Connor said. He closed his eyes, centering himself with an exhale, and smiled softly. 

“You sure?”

Connor turned the tap on, letting the water heat against his fingers before turning to press his mouth against the soft skin just behind the hinge of Kyle’s jaw. “Yes. Enjoy yourself.”

Kyle searched his face, brows drawn together and mouth caught between an unspoken question and a frown. Connor reached, cupping his jaw and liking the way the water smeared and faded into his skin. He thought of the way Kyle would look at him some evenings, gummy-eyed and awed. He thought of the way Kyle would never ask, never push, but moaned like his chest was cracking when Connor took a deep breath and ducked to taste him. 

Connor loved when Kyle felt good. He could give that to him.

“I just want you to feel good too,” Kyle would breathe, hands restless as they roamed Connor’s skin, his hair, his breath. Kyle would flush slowly and his skin would prickle with heat, his taste going richer on Connor’s tongue. It was beautiful and Connor revelled in giving it to him. After, Kyle would reach, touching at where Connor was half hard, half interested. He’d grit his teeth when Connor would move his hands away to where he enjoyed them, warm where they pushed and kneaded across his back.

“I feel good when I give you pleasure,” Connor would answer, sucking the bitter flavor from his teeth, nose wrinkling a little at the taste and the way it lingered at the back of his throat and the flat of his tongue. “I enjoy pleasing you.”

He could tell it wasn’t the same in the flash of disappointment that Kyle always tried to hide. He wished he understood where to fold, how to press, how to create the delicate origami of desire that could hold the heat Kyle craved. Connor wondered if bitterness was actually the flavor that lingered in his mouth. 

He glanced to the side, catching a moment of soft appreciation in Jason’s eyes flicking along Kyle’s body before Roy snorted and shook his head. He watched his brother lean forward, mouth moving soft and inaudible against Jason’s ear. He saw the moment desire ignited and turned back to Kyle. 

“Please, my love,” Connor whispered as he kissed him, willing him to understand. “Enjoy yourself. I _want_ you to.”

*

Kyle exhaled a punched-out little sound of disbelief that pulled a small proud smirk onto Roy's face, the crooked canine making the line of his top lip surly as a dare, as a taunt.

"I-?"

"Use your words." The command was subtle, inviting and warm in Roy's voice as he reached the wet tip of Kyle’s cock where it was leaking into the cool dark of their bedroom. There was a tremor running under Kyle's skin, a delicious little hint of barely controlled need. “ _Convince_ me.”

"I can take it," Kyle whispered, voice hoarse and Roy wet his lips, remembering the way Kyle’s lips had stretched around Jason's length, eyes closed and lost to the rhythm of it. He remembered the eagerness, the determination. “I _can_.”

"Good." Roy smeared his thumb over the pulse of precome and let himself glance to where Jason's eyes were locked on the sight, locked on the thick ruddy dick in Roy's hands, on Kyle’s lean tanned body naked at the edge of the bed. It was a possessive angry look that rolled back on a moan as the green construct fucking into him in slow rough thrusts widened. "That's very good, Kyle. Look at him. See that? See what you’re doing to him?” He lowered his voice, husking the next as something meant only for Kyle. “It’s okay to enjoy yourself, Kyle. You're doing so well."

Kyle swallowed, hands curling tighter at his sides, and a small determined tendril of green slithered along the sheets to tap lightly at Jason's mouth, probing and prying inside. It hooked and undulated deeper before swelling. The slip of green rippled forward, never pulling back just welling and flowing to slide into Jason’s mouth. It stretched, clawing Jason’s mouth open wider and stroked over his tongue. Jason choked, his whole body shuddering in a visible shake as his knees spread wider, rumpling the sheets as he tried vainly to rut against the mattress. Roy watched Jason move, heart pounding at the sight of him desperate for some touch to where his dick was swollen, violently hard and strapped with a tight green ring. 

*

Connor knew he should get out of their bed; he knew he should twist his body and settle his feet to the cool wood floor of their bedroom. He should stretch his toes, then the arches of his feet. He should be up; he should be moving in the slow ache of arms to reach toward the ceiling. He always loved the feel of his body waking up, the rich throb of blood into tight muscles as they shivered and sighed into loose warm awareness.

His mornings were usually a dance of stretches, of a slow meditative tai-chi. His palms would move the morning energy like a wave as he found his center. The sun would start on the sheets, a bright divot of light that waddled over the rumpled cotton. It would badger to the edge of the bed in minutes, sliding toward his brown skin before hopping from the edge of the bed onto the back of his knees. Mornings would spread warm as melted butter over the room.

Today, Connor Hawke didn't want to move, on his side as he watched the watery morning light puddle on Kyle's skin, leaving a small shadow in the low dimples at the small of his back.

"Be back soon," Kyle had promised fifty-six days prior, grinning a kiss to his temple as he leaned back inside their apartment window, one hand on the sill and the other curled to tug Connor close. He was in his uniform, the wide green mask obscuring his eyes, the charisma of his grin left to just the tease of lips and line of his jaw. 

"Just be back," Connor had replied. 

He never knew if it was better to watch Kyle lean back, lift off the ground and float impossible and powerful against the night sky. He didn't know if it was better to watch the flare of green, the lingering trail Kyle left burned on his gaze as he powered somewhere Connor couldn't follow.

Connor couldn't bring himself to look away until he couldn't pretend to see him any longer. Kyle was needed in the impossible vastness of space and Connor was just a man with a bow, an arrow, and a lumpy unfinished slab of love to fashion into use while Kyle touched the stunning sprawl of the cosmos.

It seemed impossible that Kyle could want to touch him. Kyle could stare into the endless nuanced forever of space. He could swim in nebulae. He could stand on alien planets and taste flavors no human would ever understand. Kyle could stare directly into a beauty that scholars could only think of in tangential theory - the thrumming power at the heart of creation.

And he kissed _Connor_ like he was beautiful, like he was precious.

Connor had been on the couch, reading with one heel tucked up onto the cushion, the other leg sprawled out when Kyle came rocketing back onto their fire escape, the metal groaning as he stumbled and panted. His black hair moved, curling and flowing in an endless restless shift like he was underwater, caught in the quivering glow of lantern green limning him in the pale purplish light of evening. The sight of him pulled an endless smile from Connor. It reached right into Connor’s chest to hook his heart into joy. He could feel it breaking over his face.

He knew he was too open, undefended against this love. Connor had dropped his book, dropped his plans for the night, and rushed to his feet as Kyle smiled like he’d found home and clambered through the window. 

“Sorry I’m la-”

Connor had kissed him, unable to contain himself, unable to be calm and centered. He’d pressed close, crashing against Kyle, and catching him with mouth and hands. He’d revelled in the press of his body pulled against Kyle’s lean breadth. Kyle had groaned, a broken hot noise like hunger gone too long, moved from appetite to starvation.

“I missed you too,” Kyle had laughed. It had sounded like a sob, and Connor had made a decision, pulling those artist hands and placing them on his body, placing them under the loose thin cotton of his shirt against the beat of his heart. Kyle had startled, the uniform dropping off of him in distracted concern and Connor had sighed at the sight of his eyes, golden-green leaning into that pale heady brown. “Connor?”

“I want...” It wasn’t sex, but it was a need. Connor had wanted to pull Kyle to him, to drape him against his skin. He’d wanted to feel his touch, his mouth, his hands spread and moving over his body. “I missed you.”

The apartment had felt empty without him. Connor had felt a longing, echoing awareness of the lack of Kyle in his space. He’d wanted the weight of Kyle against him. He’d wanted a way to hand the unwavering ache of his love back to Kyle, to give him a way to answer the hunger.

“Love isn’t a finite thing,” he whispered the next morning as Kyle slept, face down and vulnerable in the tangle of white cotton around his thighs. He was naked and Connor ached with the act, body sore and used. He’d wanted to love Kyle, to wrap him up and curl him safe under his ribs. It hurt, the separation, the longing, the otherness that he felt now when Kyle was gone. He reached, pressing his fingertips to the rough black stubble on Kyle’s cheek. He brushed his fingers over the black hairs on Kyle’s forearm. He bent, helpless to the need to push love in soft mouthed kisses like he could share his breath with Kyle’s skin. “It’s not...”

Kyle shifted, a shivering little stretch as he grumped half awake and slitted an eye open to watch him. Connor swallowed at the thick feel of emotion caught in his throat like he would drown in it. Connor thought of the words of his youth, the idea that giving something a name made it smaller than it was. What he felt had no name, not even his own. It existed within the spaces that made him. It spread, creeping into everything until he was changed, moved from the billion grains of sand that was his life caught in tiny moments to glass; changed from him into _them_.

“Love wells from within,” he whispered, prayerful and urgent. “It’s endless, when reached for it rises, filling every space made to accept it. It’s so much, Kyle. It’s so much and I can’t-”

“Connor?” Kyle’s face broke from sleepy soft to confused and concerned. “Hey, what’s-?” 

Connor watched him stretch a hand and snatched it to grip, to press palm hot against where his heart felt bruised and swollen, cracking to seep this bright perfect fear, this bright perfect love on Kyle’s fingers like paint.

“I love you.” He’d swallowed. 

They’d made love in the dark. Connor had let Kyle have everything he could, let him pull Connor’s clothes from his skin and press him into the sheets with soft urgent kisses. He’d spread his knees and pulled Kyle close. He’d needed him close. 

It had been a gentle careful thing that Kyle created against Connor’s skin. He’d tried, wide eyed and wishing as Kyle touched him, as Kyle reached fingers inside him as they kissed. He’d _tried_. Kyle had thrown him a moment of startled joy when he breached Connor’s body, when he moved inside him, hands gripping and whole body a long rolling press. 

It had felt strange, Connor’s body shivering at the stretch, the friction. He’d trembled under the litany of his name in Kyle’s mouth as he tried to show him love, to make sex something that could be more. Connor could feel him go harder, go needier, go desperate and wanting. He’d curled his arms around Kyle and held on. It had been like he was half-present in this act, too aware of his body and the room around them. Connor could lose himself in the slow kisses on the couch, could lose himself to Kyle stroking his hands over his skin, but in sex, he was distant and lexical. 

He was so _aware_ of how he was failing. 

Kyle had closed his eyes. Connor had been performing instead of participating. He copied the soft broken sounds Kyle couldn’t stop from spilling against his ear. He could feel the way it made Kyle’s body alive. He had screwed his eyes shut, tangling their fingers together and tried - he’d tried to lose himself to the feel. He’d tried to find the warm pulsing center of something like desire. He’d _tried_ , but could only screw his eyes shut and pant through each shove of Kyle’s hips. 

It hadn’t been pain. He hadn’t been forced. He’d _wanted_. He had been able to see the way he was supposed to react, had been able to almost taste it as Kyle shifted, hips stuttering urgent, mouth dropped open and fingers clutching.

“ _Close_ ,” Kyle had gasped, skin sweat slick and sticking to Connor where they touched. “Do you-?”

“It’s okay,” Connor had whispered, voice a tight noise he tucked against Kyle’s jaw. “Please, Kyle.”

He’d felt Kyle break open, aching and sinking through a painful looking sort of bliss. He’d been grateful for the exhaustion as Kyle fell against him. He’d understood how to hold him even as his body felt exposed and open in the aftermath. He’d counted Kyle’s breaths, the kisses between them, until he’d gone loose and limp in sleep. Connor hadn’t been able to let himself look away, watching his fingers touch Kyle in the dark and wishing he could be enough.

Now, in the long pause as Connor searched for words, Kyle frowned, rolling to hook his ankle over Connor’s leg. He tried to tug Connor close, pulling across the space marked in inches between them. Connor watched his own hand reach, felt the tickle of Kyle’s dark chest hair against his palm. He smiled as it tried to curl against his fingertips when he pressed to feel Kyle’s heartbeat. 

“I am scared that I cannot show you love fully. As you deserve.” 

“ _Connor_ , no.” Kyle’s face went worried, the drawn line of his brow easy to read.

The pads of Kyle’s fingers tasted salty when Connor kissed them. “I will love you as long as you will let me,” Connor whispered, reassuring. “I will love you longer than I exist in time I think.” He tipped a small soft smile at Kyle. “I know desire as a word on a page. The fear lives in silence; it lives in secrets. Mine is that one day you will tire of this half love I can offer. Love should be full, Kyle.” 

“That’s not-”

“I am not enough, but I am selfish and I _need_ you.” He placed his truth between them, exhaling a slow breath, the kind that would pull his ribs taut against his skin and tighten his stomach into the release. The kind of breath that felt round and whole, a sentence in its own right. “I needed to speak my truth to you. Thank you for allowing me this space.”

*

Some things would never get old; Jason Todd red and fucked out, thick lashes clumped and wet, hair a tangle of curls, trembling with need was one of them. Roy sighed, a soft pleased noise at the sight. Roy understood. He could watch it for hours, for days; he wanted it when he was alone. Kyle was a bonus, a tool to use in loving Jason. The other man had an artist's gaze, yearning and a little lost at the beauty of it, like he wanted to map it, map the way Jason's body moved. 

"Do you want to touch him?" Roy asked, mild as he pulled his hand back, reaching to paint Jason's lip with the slick Kyle had left on his thumb. The green construct felt like warmth and pressure. It had no texture, no real weight, just intent. He glanced to where Kyle was standing, planted and obedient. Both of them were naked, bared where Roy was seated fully clothed.

Kyle's eyes tore from the sight, the soft golden hazel of his eyes limned with the Lantern green, the glow of the constructs catching him in relief - slabs of thick cut muscle broad over his hip, the sharp line of his collarbones, the bob of his Adam's apple, and the divot of his navel. The other man had a trail of dark hair that collected between his pecs and fanned low and wide over his belly, darker and thicker where it curled around his dick. Roy tilted his head, reaching to trace the whorl around a flat brown nipple that peaked and pebbled at the touch. He could almost feel Kyle strain into it, beg for more silently. 

" _Yes_."

*

"They always run," Roy sighed over the comm to Connor, rubbing his jaw against his shoulder quickly as he sighted along the arrow's shaft, tracking where the man was jackrabbiting around the upturned table of plastic wrapped Eote and out the back door to sprint across the gravel lot. The purple powder was packed into neat salable bricks, a few cracked open in the crossfire, the air gone hazy with the new drug that had been creeping into the club scene in Star City. "Like, did they forget that we use ranged weapons?"

The warehouse squatted on a near acre of industrial land on the far side of the city, tucked behind the viaduct and rubbing shoulders with the dockside cargo storage. They'd tracked the crew from their meetup at a long haul dry-bulk cargo-ship through the stacked metal shipping crates. The man on the run was the newest deckhand for the tugboat crew that was facilitating international trafficking into the city. They'd interrupted the final sale, creeping onto the cutting floor silently. 

Roy had grinned at Connor, wet his lips, and drawn his bow, waving Connor forward. Connor looked comfortable in his uniform, the same mottled green as his father and complimentary to the red and black of Roy’s colors. He went low as Roy climbed into the ceiling, taking the flank. He picked off the runners, pinning them silently to walls and crates with perfect aim. He enjoyed working with his brother's silent violence at his back.

"You would complain if they didn't run too," Connor pointed out as he planted a hand on the shoulder of a good who was a solid foot taller than him - a broad hewn porterhouse of a man with thick black arm hair, a milky blue eye, and faded blue tattoos carved into his biceps - and vaulted, using the momentum to kick another peddler in the chin. The second man's head rocked back, body crumpling in slow motion, and Roy pretended the mic picked up the sound of a tooth skidding across the cement warehouse floor. 

"I like complaining," Roy muttered, taking a quick half breath, firing through one of the broken warehouse windows at the fleeing man in the pause. He lowered his arm, fingering the fletching on another arrow. He didn’t need to watch the arrow fly.

He dropped his arms and turned, leaning a hip against the metal railing that surrounded the top floor of the warehouse and rolled down the folded flight of stairs down to a door leading out to the pitted asphalt parking lot. Below him, Connor was surrounded by five men of different sizes, ducking and weaving through the fight like a beautiful dance. Roy scratched the side of his nose and pointed at where his brother was shifting low under another punch, catching the attacker’s thick wrist easily, and rolling the large brute of a man over his back to slam into the floor. 

Behind him outside, there was a faint yelp and the distant sound of a body hitting the ground. "Do you want some help?"

"I was going to ask you for advice," Connor stated into a quick snapped punch that broke the man's nose in a burst of blood. He wasn’t even breathing hard into the comm.

Roy blinked, eyebrows shooting up as he pointed back at himself in shock. "Me? Wait, are you sure you don't want to talk to like... _anyone_ els-"

"It's about sex," Connor calmly continued, knocking the man out with a left cross that blended seamlessly into a twisting hand-plant that danced him between the two advancing thugs.

"Oh. Well, yeah, that makes sense then," Roy nodded, grabbing the brim of his snapback and rolling it around to the back of his head. He palmed the railing, vaulting it easily to land on the top of the stacked wooden crates. He slid and worked his way closer. Connor’s question deserved his full attention. There was a scuff of boot and Roy pulled another arrow quickly, knocked and aimed at the man that had been trying to sneak around the stack of crates to ambush him. 

"I wouldn't," he warned.

The man stared at the arrowhead and frowned. There was a moment when Roy thought maybe he'd be smart, but he was used to disappointment. The man didn't even hide the way his hands flailed towards the gun tucked into his waistband before Roy loosed the arrow, rolling his eyes as it speared through the man's shoulder and buried the barbed head into the wooden crate behind him. 

"Told you."

"You fucking shot me," the man wheezed, startled and high pitched. Roy touched his sunglasses low, eyeing him over the frames. “With an _arrow_?

"You must not be from around here. It's like, our _thing_ , right? Here in Star City? Arrows?" He turned towards Connor and jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the perp, shaking his head. "They must be new."

Connor didn't answer and Roy moved around the scuffle keeping him occupied, pacing towards the long tables that had been set along the center of the space. Each end had been capped with a wheeled cart to help move the finished product to the crates for further distribution. He poked at a passed out kid of maybe seventeen, pale and scrawny, on whom they'd obviously been testing this batch of Eote. He dropped to a squat, tilting his head and checking for visible signs of life, noting the small purpling bruise that was blooming from under their nostrils and crackling over the right side of their cheek. The kid was androgynous, slim, pretty faced, and wearing shiny lipgloss, electric blue eyeliner, a tight black turtleneck, and shoulder-length multicolored hair. They looked like someone who would hang out with Mia.

"Do you think sex is important to a relationship?" Connor asked into the next pause between blows, the words punctuated by the sound of a body crashing into a crate - the splintering wood a violent exclamation point to the soft spoken question. Roy set his fingers to the kid's pulse, frowning at the cold clammy feel of their skin. 

"Is Kyle pressuring you-"

"No," Connor interrupted. "He would never. That's not..."

Roy exhaled a soft sound of relief at the feel of a thready pulse, a loose watery pump that he counted carefully. "Good, I don't want to have to hide a body. That's kind of against the whole hero thing, you know?"

The floor was slippery with the dusting of the drug and Roy carefully shifted his weight to reach into one of the side pockets of his quiver, clicking through to find the small shot of adrenaline. He glanced over his shoulder as he slapped it into the kid on the floor, noting the soft pleased smile on Connor's face at the sentiment. His brother was finishing up, the lines of his body singing with competence and contained violence.

"Appreciated," Connor breathed. He was incredible to watch, fluid and trained to slip and curl around the fight, to end each movement with an explosive sort of finality. Roy watched him lean backwards, bracing himself with a fist curled into the holster strapped to a lean pale goon with green hair and acne scars so he could pop a knee to break another assailant's jaw. Connor used the ricocheted force of his blow to hit the floor, pulling the green haired goon over his shoulder, and slapping the man’s body into the cement. He finished the fight with a quick controlled punch to the man's temple. “So, it’s important?”

Roy kept an easy hand on the kid's body, holding them steady as they gasped back into a startled flailing consciousness. “I mean, yeah? But it’s not everything?” He tilted his head, leaning a little weight onto the kid when they wrapped both hands around his wrist and tried to squirm away. He looked back at them, smiling a little at the wild look in their eyes, red-rimmed under clumped wet lashes. “Hey. Welcome back. Almost lost you, kiddo.”

“What- what happened? Where’s Seriph?” The kid’s voice was high pitched and softly terrified. Roy kept his hand on their chest, letting it ground them. He knew what it was like to surface alone and afraid. 

“She’s in the hospital, recovering. She helped us find you.” Roy nodded when the kid went relaxed and boneless, trembling in a fine shake under their skin. “Stay put. Going to get some help, okay? I don’t want to have to restrain you.”

“I’m in so much trouble,” the kid breathed, tears breaking and running in fast salty tracks over their temple into their hair. “Oh _God_.”

“Worry about that later,” Roy told them. “Right now? Just lay still and breathe until the ambulance gets here.” He tapped the comm in his ear. “Oracle? You do have one coming, right?”

“I called it in when you and Green Arrow breached the building,” came Oracle’s flat computerized response. 

“Thanks, O.”

“Don’t mention it,” came the reply. There was a blip that meant the channel had widened. “And sex isn’t everything, Arrow.”

Connor straightened like he’d been caught with a hand in a cookie jar, blush visible on his dark skin. “Oh, um. Thank you.”

The only response was the chime of her departure and the comms went quiet. Roy tilted his head, hooking it out of his ear and stuffing it into his pocket as he frowned to where Connor was looking at the circle of bodies around him, face inscrutable. 

“You okay there?” Roy asked, pushing to his feet and slinging his quiver around to start pulling out the industrial grade zip ties. He crossed the space, tapping the flat edge of the black plastic tie to the back of Connor’s wrist. “You’ve been distracted.”

Connor took the tie from him, sighing and looking directly at him. His brother was barely hidden in the mask, face utterly open and easy to read. “You and Ja-”

“Hood,” Roy reminded gently. Connor was still terrible at remembering code names.

“There’s a heat to the way you speak, the way you touch, th-”

“Does it bother you?”

“No. It doesn’t bother me,” Connor sighed. “My family is my only frame of reference.”

“We are a very, um, _tactile_ bunch. Not all relationships are like that, though.” 

“But the difference between a friendship and a relationship is usually the sexual aspect.” Connor’s mouth flattened and he sank to a loose limbed squat, starting to roll the first passed out perp carefully onto their front so he could bind their wrists. “I can...” He frowned bitterly, sucking his teeth and the noise of the teeth biting into the binding sang sharp into his silence. “I love him. 

Roy moved in the opposite direction, binding the bodies. “Okay.” 

“He loves me. But, I can see that he is _missing_ something and I know it is not something I am capable of giving him.” Roy glanced over and Connor was looking at him, crouched and balanced with a light touch to the floor. “I know that sex is a thing that is enjoyable, that people crave it. I... don’t? I’ve seen the heat. I can’t find it within myself. I _want_ to, but it seems like watching desire through a window, like it is something outside of myself.” 

“You did grow up in a monastery.”

“That just means I’m not as versed in the ways of the world. Other novices had desires. They weren’t damaged.”

“Woah, hey! Damaged? There’s nothing wrong with you-”

“I want to give him everything, R-” his mouth clicked shut around the name and he took a slow breath, centering himself visibly before he continued. “Arsenal. I want to give him _everything_.”

“What are you asking?” Roy watched Connor wet his lips, square his shoulder, and face down fear.

“I want you to teach me how to sleep with him so he’ll believe it.”

“I’m sorry, come again?” Roy winced as he startled, knee cracking against the cement floor. 

“Teach me how to please him so that he won’t leave me. I need him to think-”

“Absolutely not. That’s... no. C-Arrow, _no_. Have you talked to him about all of this?”

“Yes. He says it does not matter. He says that we do not need to have sex.” Connor’s voice moved urgent and he moved to the next body on the floor, precise hands catching the crook into a binding. “A person can only be shown they are unloved in their own language so often before they begin to believe it. I do not speak this language. I need to... I need to _learn_. I need to make him feel love the way he understands it. I know he does not _need_ sex, but it is natural for him, to touch me, to want me, to show me.” Connor looked up again and Roy could read distress, fear, and a slow building uncertainty clamoring over Connor’s body language. “I cannot lose him and I am going to.”

“That’s not-”

“If you were unable to show Hood _physically_ how much you loved him? If you poured all of that attention and intent only to have it accepted with indifference? Would you continue to try to give him this part of you if you only recieved a cold quizzical thank you as a response? If you loved with intent only to be shuffled to the side over and over?” Connor was frowning, a tremble in his voice as spoke. He took a breath and looked up, holding Roy’s eyes. “Eventually any sane person would stop reaching for something that is incapable reaching back.”

“We heroes are very stubborn.” When Connor hissed a soft angry breath at his response, a startling show of emotion. Roy floundered, tucking away humor to be serious. “I don’t think... it’s not the same.”

“No. It is not. You look at him and he catches _fire_. He touches you and you _burn_. Kyle reaches for me and I am... deflecting. I am snuffing the flame he tries to share with me. I need to find a way to participate in his desire. I need to find a way to let him be touched with that same intent you two touch each other...” 

Connor blinked, face going thoughtful before he turned a steady deliberate gaze on Roy. Roy had a moment of sudden apprehension. 

“Sleep with him.”

“What? No!” Roy shook his head sharply, voice dipping out of the startled register and into a hissed low tone. “Jesus, bro. I can’t do that. What about- did you forget about Hood? _With the guns_?”

“I did not.”

“It doesn’t work like that-”

“What if you _both_ have sex with Kyle?” Connor widened his eyes, urgent and tipping to something like a plea. “It could work. Think about it. Please.”

“I can’t believe you are suggesting a threesome at a crime scene,” Roy muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Maybe you do take after Old-Arrow after all.”

“That is not a no.”

“I’ll ask man, but it’s... it’s not as easy as you’re making it sound. He’s going to say no. Have you even talked to K- have you talked to _him_ about this?”

“I will.” Connor beamed at him, hopeful and stunning.

“Fuck. Fine. I’ll ask, but if he breaks my jaw, it’s on you, bro.”

“Um... hello? Is that ambulance coming?” came a soft thready voice and Roy shoved to his feet. “I-”

“Yeah, kid. It’s coming.” He pointed at Connor. “This conversation isn’t over.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, man.” Roy paced back to where the kid was laying on the floor, pitiful in the purple bruise, the purple dust of drugs, and tears. He sighed, bent, and scooped them up. They stank, bony and fragile in the weight of their clothes. “Up we go.”

“I wouldn’t say no to anyone who looked like him,” the kid whispered.

“You and I are paragons of terrible life choices, kiddo.”

*

"You know what you have to do." Roy tweaked the nipple under his hand and Jason choked a noise when the constructs fucking into his mouth, his ass, pressing cautiously - curious - against the slit at the head of his dick went rough and desperate for a heartbeat. "Turn him facing away from us so we can see and he can present."

Kyle's dick bobbed, slapping once against his stomach at the tense moment of desperate desire. Roy could only exhale at the way his own dick strained against the soft denim of his jeans, stain creeping into the fabric where he was ignoring his own needs. "Oh _fuck_."

"Language," Roy smiled, tone a soft admonishment as he laid a quick crack of palm against the soft tender inside of Kyle's thigh. The other man whined a needy little bitten off sound and the shadows in the room swirled as Jason was lifted and turned, hundreds of greedy green hands stroking over his body and shifting him in soft little nudges. Roy bit his lip at the sight of the way Jason went taut and shaking on his back for them, fucked out and nearly insensate as the green writhed and touched into him, inexorable and relentless, never pulling out just the careful constant press for more, deeper, wider, all of him. Jason's eyes found his, nearly black with the thin ring of that perfect blue-gray-green and Roy almost gave in. " _Soon_ , baby. You're doing so good, Jay. You're taking it so well for me. My perfect boy."

Jason's head rocked back, throat visibly working around a long muffled noise. The glowing hands pulled at the construct shackles, pulling his muscled arms into a long line and then rolling him roughly back face down on the sheets. Jason’s hands kept clenching, kept reaching; his fingers stretching and testing, trying to find something grounding to touch. Roy blew out a breath, gripped his dick through the denim, and stood, pressing against Kyle's back and dropping a hand to cup his balls. Roy kept his control. He focused on his task, on their trust, and then slid his fingers to tap at the still wet muscle where he'd opened Kyle up carefully, finger by finger, breathless plea by breathless plea. It had been a patient slow process earlier, focused and slick until Kyle had been squirming and hard, thighs spread and hands caught in Jason's wide palms over the kitchen table. 

*

Jason shivered at the soft mouthed kisses that Roy pushed into his skin. He closed his eyes, smearing his smile into the sheets and reached back, hand slipping on the sweat slick skin of Roy's side. Roy smelled like clean warm sweat, the tang of salt and the bitter burning rasp of gunpowder tangled in his hair. "That was quick."

"Connor backed me up," Roy mumbled, a slow rattling sound as his hand dimpled the mattress next to Jason's hip. He was shucking clothes, the clatter of his boots had woken Jason. He could almost count the trail from the front door of Roy's house to the bedroom in bits of Roy's uniform. Boots by the front door, keys tossed on the counter, the long double reinforced zipper of his tunic opening in a nearly silent tick. The buckled quiver a thud by the couch. The white compression shirt a silent slip of fabric- a whisper of intent dropped in the hall. The hat must have been lost in the bathroom, set on the back of the toilet as Roy washed his hands quickly. "I want you to fuck me."

Jason blinked, turning slightly and craning to see Roy from the corner of his eye. Roy's pants were open, one sharply muscled hip naked in the night tucked dark into the bedroom. "Yeah?"

"Yes." Jason watched Roy let go of his dick long enough to flip the sheets from his body, the ache was visible in the way his whole body seemed to rock back from the sight before he started stroking himself roughly, stripping his cock and panting as he stared.

"Well, get down here," Jason rumbled, shifting to the side and reaching under himself to tuck his hardening dick against his stomach. He noted a bruise trying to bloom over Roy's ribs, the taped fingers on his left hand. He noted the reddened flush on his skin, the way his hair was half caught back. "Hey, c'mere."

Roy shoved his pants down his thighs, a little kick of his left leg to detangle from the reinforced fabric. There were red lividity marks on his skin, a lingering afterimage of where his jock had sat, where the line of his thigh holster spanned his muscle. He had stripes over his thick knotted biceps that matched the ones on his forearms where the bracers were held. Roy tripped into bed, weight rocking them together as Jason reached to catch him, twisting onto his side. Roy was watching him in the dark of the bedroom. The bed was pushed to the wall opposite the door, a king mattress with a soft gray fabric headboard. 

Roy didn't spend much on himself, but he splurged here. Jason had arched an eyebrow at him when the old ratty full they'd shared briefly had been replaced. Roy had shrugged. "I want you to sleep."

"You want to flee," Jason had snorted, palming the back of his neck and pulling him to kiss, slow and deliberate. "Don't lie." 

Roy slept in the buff, sprawled and running hot with a thin corner of sheet covering his hips. He kicked bare feet into the open air, snoring softly. Jason would hoard the rest of the blankets, burying himself under them and reaching for Roy's heat. Roy only hissed when Jason stuck cold fingers under his stomach, pressed his frigid feet to his calf. Jason liked that he never tried to stop him from touching him.

"God, how are you this cold?" Roy would mutter, rubbing his face against his palm before flopping to blink at him. Jason loved his pale freckled eyelids in the dark, the way he could nose against where the freckles on his shoulders overlapped and bled into each other, small cinnamon colored continents in the sea of pale skin.

"I died, you know," Jason would huff, touching his teeth and pulling the soft curl of Roy's knuckles under the sheet to rub against where he was waking up.

"Really?" Roy would answer, sarcasm a soft ripple of tone as his fingers found Jason's length and traced the vein that ran along the incredibly soft skin of his dick. "I hadn't heard." He would watch the moment he tightened his grip on Jason, watch the way Jason would close his eyes, swallow, and sigh his name like a promise.

Jason loved how easily Roy wanted him, how hungry his hands felt. He loved feeling wanted; he loved that Roy made him feel inspiring. He loved that Roy needed in a very clear, clean way. 

"Touch me," Roy whispered into a kiss that was a stumble of lips as he turned onto his front and reached to tuck his fingers into the edge of the mattress where it pressed tight into the headboard. Jason could see his ribs move, the stunning flex and play of muscle across his back. He could see the restless writhe of his hips as he spread his thighs and waited. 

"Fuck babe," Jason exhaled, pushing up and slinging a leg over his hips, balls tightening as he rubbed his dick along the crease of Roy's ass. "I should let you play with Connor more."

Roy choked a rough sounding laugh and jerked his head at the nightstand. "Slick me up. Don't... don't be gentle. I want to feel you tomorrow."

The nightstand was an older piece. Jason loved that Roy curated a collection of real wood furniture- mismatched mid century modern caught in walnut and careful craftsmanship to last. He loved that Roy didn't spend money on things that would fall apart. He liked that Roy chose to keep things that were battered but built to last. Jason matched. The drawer was easy to reach, the bottle still a little slick from the last time they'd used it and Jason flipped the cap, letting the lube puddle in his palm. He set the bottle back on the nightstand and settled his weight on his heels. "Hold yourself open?"

Roy's voice was a strangled vowel and he moved quickly, reaching to follow Jason's suggestion, face pressed tight into the mattress. Jason heard the click in his throat when he swallowed at the sight. "Oh, fuck. _Roy_."

"C'mon Jaybird," Roy husked, punctuating the words with a writhe of hips that Jason could track in the shift of muscle in the dark. 

The bed sat in the center of the wall, two nightstands on either side. Jason's side had a lamp to read by and his current paperback. The closet and master bath were two doors side by side on the interior wall. A dresser held Roy's clothes, a drawer emptied to make space for Jason's jeans, his forgotten t-shirts, his underwear. He had a toothbrush here. 

Roy's body was tight, an insane sort of heat that clutched at his fingers when he pushed slick into him. Roy's body was flushed pink, he could feel the heat of it, loving the way his touch pulled a prickle of sweat to his skin. He liked that the freckles would go stark at first before sinking into the blush, swallowed as Jason braced himself and slicked his dick, smearing some helplessly onto Roy's back, his shoulder, his hair as he moved to brace his weight and fucked in with a quick snap of hips that shocked a startled noise from Roy. 

Jason needed a moment, needed to close his eyes and find control in the animal need to fuck and claw and claim. Nothing about loving Roy was calm. Roy's teeth chattered, jaw clenching as he hissed a breath. "You okay?"

"Is... Do I? Fuck, does it feel-?"

This was something Jason understood and he ducked, settling against Roy's body, gripping his hip and tucking his mouth against his ear. "You feel so good," he whispered and started a slow shift of hips, letting Roy adjust, letting him shake through the stretch. "Hot and tight, like you were made for me. You look incredible taking me. Is that what you need to hear?"

" _Yes_ ," Roy moaned, voice sloppy and low even as it slipped into that tone of command. "Say you want me."

"I want you," Jason growled, shoving into Roy roughly, changing the tone of this conversation.

"Sa-say you need me," Roy breathed, eyes closed and head turned to the side to keep Jason's mouth at his ear.

"I need you," Jason replied. "Fuck, Roy. You're-."

"Good."

Roy was wild, flushed and reckless with himself as they fucked. He kept breathing Jason's name, small little pleas peppering the shift of his hips. They moved at some point, Jason finding his knees and hauling Roy's hips up for a better angle. He could keep time by the slap of skin on skin, the wet noise of Roy's body taking him. He tried to hold himself together, hands mapping a restless path over Roy's hips, the line of his spine, into the salt sweat tangle of his hair, over the fronts of his thighs and around to stroke his dick. 

At some point it was just heat between them, the slow growing tangle of something dark and sweet, the tension, the need to fuck- to be _inside_. Roy's mouth was open, just spilling soft half noises against the sheets. Jason tried to focus on the feel of the bare mattress under his palm as he hunched over, fucking in sharp stabs of his hips, rutting and almost animal- instinct to take and own. He smeared his face between Roy's shoulders. He could smell Roy's come, felt it pulse over his knuckles, hot as blood. He bit down and claimed what was _his_.

Roy's body burned under him, hot and languid when he opened his eyes, feeling the press and push as he softened and slipped from him. "You gonna talk to me now?" he murmured, hazing in the afterglow.

Roy's ribs expanded, Jason could feel the lift under him. "You have a gun on you?"

Jason snorted and slipped to the side, tugging Roy up and out of the wet mess they'd made of the sheets. "No."

"Okay, good."

"Should I get one?" Jason asked, reaching to find a blanket to tug over them and settling back when he came up empty. "I thought this was an easy case."

"Oh, yeah, no. This isn't about the case. That's fine." Roy huffed, pushing up and stacking his fists on Jason's chest, setting his chin on top. "Connor wants us to fuck Kyle."

Jason understood why Roy had asked about the gun, a startling hot curl of possessive anger knifing through him. "No."

"Okay." Roy ducked to push a kiss into the skin of Jason's stomach. "I'll let him know."

Jason frowned harder, finding his hands moving without his permission to pull Roy's body closer. "Do you... do you _want_ to fuck Kyle?"

"He's handsome," Roy shrugged, nonchalant with his honesty in a way that Jason always appreciated even if it hurt. "But-" He leaned up, reaching over Jason to grab a fistful of the blanket where it had fallen off the bed. "I think I'd want to watch him fuck _you_ more." 

Roy had a way of saying impossibly hot things in an almost careless way. He'd waited for Jason to touch him first; he'd been so patient. The rest was a litany of Roy saying something that broke Jason's concentration, broke a few chairs, and the last bed-frame. Roy would go wide eyed and cup him when Jason caged him against a wall in a firefight. He'd drop to his knees, open his mouth, and pull sounds out of Jason he hadn't known he could make. He'd press against his back, tuck those warm fingers into his pants and make Jason ache.

Jason loved his hand at the back of his neck. He loved the feel of Roy inside him. It felt like he belonged there, under Jason's skin- electric and visceral.

" _What_?"

"I mean, it's a fantasy, right?" Roy sank back against Jason, rolling the blanket over them and snuggling close. He felt the bump of Roy's nose against his jaw, followed by a soft kiss like a signature. "But, you know, the idea of getting to tell someone how to fuck you? To get to pet your hair and maybe slip my dick into your mouth when you moan? I think you would look incredible. All fucked out and sucking me." He popped up, grinning briefly like he hadn't just said something that crackled like white noise over Jason's brain. "But, I'm super biased when it comes to you, Jaybird."

"That's... something you'd want?"

"Oh _fuck_ yeah. _God_ , you'd look so beautiful, you know? I'd get to just watch you lose it. Open you up and then sit back and pet your hair as he fucked you loose and sloppy. I mean, fuck, maybe you could fuck him while I held him down. He’d probably get off on that shit. I bet he could use that ring of his too. I always thought those lantern dudes were hella into bondage and shit." Roy was warming to the subject, moving to prop up on an elbow and smooth his hand over Jason's skin, petting him with a warm calloused palm. "He could hold you still so you couldn't do anything but let me whisper how good you look, how well you were taking it, how much I always want you." He pushed a hand between Jason's legs, smirking at the way Jason shifted his knees wider to make room. Roy wet his lips, held Jason's eyes and pushed a finger into him. "Praise you like you deserve, you know? If you want to."

"Roy," Jason sighed, unsure.

"I mean, he could fuck me-"

“No.” Jason hissed an angry noise and clutched Roy closer. He'd spent months listening to Roy fuck other people before- an endless twisting knife of jealousy at each soft moan that wasn't his. " _No_."

He felt Roy's dick twitch against the skin of his hip at the word. Jason closed his eyes, the sticky possessive need clawing over his skin. "Not that," he finished, grimacing at how soft it sounded.

"Okay," Roy breathed as his fingers started to shift, curious and purposeful as they stretched him. “Just you, baby.” Jason heard the soft whine in his throat, heard the way it hitched in his chest as Roy touched him with intent. He could feel the flush that bloomed against his skin in tandem with the soft punched out sound of Roy's response to watching him. "God, you could come again couldn't you? Like this? Just for me?" The smile Roy tucked against his skin was small and pleased. "Don't worry, Jaybird. I'm always going to be yours."

Jason nodded and tried not to think about Roy's hands on his face, voice in his ear, and someone else inside him.

*

"Fuck him how you want me to fuck you," Roy whispered, voice a low curl at the shell of Kyle's ear. "Can you do that for me?"

Kyle nodded, head falling back slightly to lean his temple against Roy's cheek. The constructs rippled again and Roy pressed into Kyle as a reward when the green formed up and took a shape that looked like him. Roy watched Jason's skin dimple in the construct version of him’s grip at his hips, watched the shimmering green swing of his long hair, the faint flicker of light at the lock of his jaw, and the desperate clawing need that seemed to simmer in him all the time. Roy watched it pull Jason back onto it’s cock, grinding forward with the construct jeans tangled just at his thighs. The detail was glorious and heady, knowing that Kyle watched him this closely, that Kyle knew the way the muscle in his shoulders clenched when he grit his teeth around each breathed word of praise. He lingered in the way the construct of him let go with one hand, flipped its hair back and then slid a flat hand up Jason's spine to grip the back of his neck. 

That’s what Kyle wanted from him.

"Good boy," he whispered to Kyle and then snapped into motion, palming the back of his neck and kicking his ankles apart as he shoved the other man face down on the mattress next to where Jason was choking on green. "Kiss him. He _needs_ it."

*

"I don't think it works like you think it does," Jason muttered, tapping the edge of his thumb against the neck of his beer. He glanced over at where Connor Hawke was sitting straight backed and comfortably serene on the metal stripes of the fire escape. "Sex."

Star City was beautiful at night, an opulent wave of glittering buildings and the far off sound of the ocean weaving carefully through the streets. He was sitting on the edge of the roof, one hand against the gritty cement lip of the parapet and booted heels catching idly against the brick. The night cartwheeled overhead, a slip of fast moving clouds rushing from the bay to cluster against the mountains to the east. The full moon had risen, orange and swollen, over the buildings while they ate. 

Roy made a point to visit his family and Jason was getting used to being included, preferring the small gatherings to the raucous full get-togethers that felt like a verbal fist fight. 

"I am sure you are right," Connor replied, his mouth twisting into a smile that hinted of self-deprecating humor. A low rumble of noise sat heavily under his words. Kyle and Connor lived a short walk from the light rail platform and the trains kept their steady schedule. "That _is_ the point."

"What if it ruins everything?" Jason wasn't looking at Connor. He looked at his wrists, his fingers, his beer, the alley below them.

"It could," Connor answered. "He is... he _is_ everything." The wrought iron of the fire escape groaned slightly as he shifted, leaning back against the railing. Connor turned his face up to the sky, perfect and beautiful in the moonlight. His brown skin looked nearly blue and his hair a cropped cloud of silvered tight curls. He was undeniably beautiful, but Jason liked the broken line of Roy's nose. There was something wondrous in the way his one crooked canine tipped his top lip into a constant smug looking smirk. It made Roy seem punchable, but Jason always wanted to shut him up with kisses. He liked those imperfections. Jason liked Roy’s freckles, his scars, his entire mismatched self.

"You'd risk it?" Jason asked, taking a swig of the craft beer Connor had provided. 

"Buddha was once asked to explain the difference between _like_ and _love_.” Connor paused, eyes searching the scraps of night sky like he would be able to find Kyle in the gaps between stars, like he’d know just where to look in the impossible vast nothing of space. Jason almost believed that he could. “Buddha took the words into his heart and smiled. He said with his still, centered, voice that when a flower is enjoyed - when it is liked only for the color of it’s petals, the shape of it’s bloom, or the fragrance it gives - it is plucked.” Connor made a quick little gesture and twirled the imaginary flower in his fingers before miming tossing it away. “When a flower is _loved_?” Connor’s face went open, a stunning sort of vulnerability that Jason wanted to cover with his hands, wanted to hide. “When it is loved, it is watered daily. One who understands this, understands life.”

Jason wet his lips, looking to the side and unable to stop the way his mind thought of the look on Roy’s face in the mornings after someone left him in the night, when he woke up alone and hid his heart in a smile over coffee. “Okay.”

“I don’t want him to feel unloved. The idea of it hurts.” Connor looked directly at Jason, voice calm and sure. “I would risk anything for him to know he is loved. Even what we have together." 

There wasn’t a feeling of ambient violence to Star City. It wasn’t littered with screams, with the endless throb of sirens and sorrow. This place wasn’t sinister and longing for blood. It held the soft salt air like it would wrap its arms around the sea and lull the people here to sleep. It felt like a fairy tale. Jason knew those didn’t always have a happy ending. They were a warning to be careful of wanting. 

“I don’t think I could risk Roy.”

“You have never needed to find a way to give him water. You were born with a spout.” Connor turned and smiled at Jason in the dark. "You care for and cultivate love with him. It is how you know he loves you. It is how he recognizes you love him. I only want the same. I think you understand this."

Jason sucked his teeth, frowning down at the beer in his hands, touching the round bottom to his thigh, watching the wet ring darken the denim. “You really want this, man?”

Connor huffed a laugh. “Do I want to share him? Not really. I am selfish.”

“Then why ask us to do this?”

“Because, I am learning to be selfless.” Connor sniffed, ducking his head. He grinned, shaking his head and leaned back, eyes going soft as he stared up at the sky. “It is... a process.”

*

Kyle's hand fumbled across the scant space, tangling roughly in Jason's hair, and pulled him into a kiss that looked like he wanted to devour, to be devoured, to lose himself the way Jason was lost in it. It looked like he’d been starving for this touch. The sound of it was wet, thick and slippery. It sounded like _please_. It sounded like _thank you_. 

“Oh, Jaybird. You’re so close aren’t you?” 

“I need,” Jason managed, ducking back into the kiss on a moan. Roy loved when he surrendered. It was a heady rich moment of wild heat, and Roy pushed his thumb into Kyle, head dropped to the side slightly and eyes sharp as he watched Jason continue kissing Kyle. The green in the room was throbbing, a swollen aching glow that drew his eye to where the construct fucked harder. Roy watched and pushed into Kyle with his thumb until it was just Jason's mouth open on soft vowels smearing against Kyle's breath. 

“Not yet, baby.” He ducked his gaze, watching as he opened Kyle with his fingers. “Kyle needs to catch up.” Roy ducked, tongue darting a taste of the soft skin at the shell of Kyle’s ear. “You want me inside you?”

“Yes,” Kyle breathed, voice low. 

Roy pushed three fingers in, pressing with purpose against his target. He felt Kyle start to shake. "Say please, Kyle."

"Please. Oh god, _please_ ," Kyle choked, his knuckles white in Jason's hair and reaching to brace his other palm uselessly against the mattress as it heaved under the weight of this. "I _need_ -"

“Good boy,” Roy smiled, petting Kyle's black hair back from his brow and pressing a kiss to his temple. "I've got you, Kyle. Relax for me now."

*

Connor stood outside the locked bathroom door, he could hear Kyle on the other side. He could hear the short sharp sound of him stroking himself, the bitten off hidden sound of sex that he was holding inside. He could hear Kyle, could hear the thready moan tucked against his teeth, the wet sound, the rattle of porcelain. Kyle had slipped out of bed abruptly. Connor had blinked awake, watching Kyle's back blearily. He'd heard the door shut, heard the catch of the lock and the tap hiss on. He'd heard the first rattle of porcelain when it told the story of Kyle bracing himself one handed against the wall over the toilet.

Connor had rolled onto his back, staring at the lines of light striping against the painted white plaster as cars passed by outside. He'd been unable to define the way his heart was breaking when he realized Kyle had felt like he needed to leave to touch himself. 

Kyle was on the other side of the door, panting and hard- eyes screwed shut and mouth bitten closed as he answered the heat under his skin alone. It was a simple story: a boy loves, he aches, he yearns, and he reaches until he can't anymore. It was a story of something ending: a boy loves and loses, hiding in the dark like he was wrong to want, hiding that something as simple as love felt sinful- felt shameful. Connor had taught him to hide his want, to service himself in silence, to keep his desire secret and solitary.

"Kyle?" he called, voice soft and thready around the round smooth feeling of sadness, of a special kind of grief. 

"Just a second," Kyle managed after a pause, strangled and taut in the lie.

"Kyle, please," Connor whispered, touching his forehead to the wood. He made a helpless selfish decision, reaching to pop the lock and slip into the bathroom. He ignored the twist of sudden invasive guilt, squaring his jaw and closing the door behind him. He exhaled, eyes burning and chest tight with an oily black emotion, familiar as an old friend.

Kyle didn't stop, stroking himself roughly with a near violent speed, pajama pants shoved down and stomach taut. His eyes were screwed shut, mouth an angry line as he panted rough through his nose. "God damn it, Connor," he breathed. "Why?"

The look he managed to slide sideways to Connor was tinted with betrayal, with guilt, with the shame of self that pinned Connor to the door unable to move. 

"I thought-" Connor started, swallowing at the way Kyle's head rocked to the side at the sound, moan crackling out of him as he spilled over his knuckles, stroking and shaking as he came. Connor crossed the short span of tile, the soft mat muting the cold on his bare feet when he was close enough to touch. 

" _Don't_." Kyle flinched away, shivering and snatched a cluster of toilet paper from the roll. He cleaned his fingers, the tip of his dick, and dropped the mess into the bowl, flushing quickly. He lifted his chin, thumbing his pajamas back up onto his hips and stared at Connor, mulish and angry. 

Connor didn't know how to answer the silent reprimand on Kyle's face. He pulled his hands back, keeping them pressed palm flat against his thighs and frowned at the floor. They were so close, he could lean forward and press his forehead to Kyle's shoulder, could smooth his palm over his stomach to pull him close, could tuck his fingers to work Kyle's fists into a loose hold. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry, Connor. Fuck." Kyle's whole body slumped, a strange loose hold that felt wrong on his frame. "I just needed... it's not-"

"I hate this." Connor wet his lips and looked up. "I hate that you feel you need to _hide_ from me."

"You think I want to hide?" Kyle's eyebrows went up. "I don't want to jerk off into the fucking toilet, Connor. I want _you_." He closed his eyes, breathing out and running a shaky hand through his hair, frowning a second later and shouldering past Connor to the still running sink, washing his hands. "But you don’t seem to want me, so I'm back to being a damn teenager, hiding my boner and jerking off in the shower. It's not your fault. I know it's not. You were raised in a damn monastery. I knew, I knew that you weren't interested in sex. We talked about it all the damn time. I just-" he cut off, slapping the tap off and bracing both palms on the lip of the sink. He lifted his eyes and looked at Connor in the mirror. "I just thought maybe it would be different if it was us. I thought you'd want me."

"I do. Kyle," Connor stepped closer, hand moving by rote to the small of his back, thumb settled in the dimple just above the elastic of his flannel pajamas. "I love you."

"Is it enough?" Kyle's voice was bitter and soft.

"It's all I have." Connor could taste salt on his mouth, feel the tears gathering along his jaw to quiver and drip cold onto the fabric of his shirt. He wasn’t sure when they started. The cotton was pale blue with a few pink bleach stains and one worn hole in the collar where the tag had been cut out. It was one of Kyle's, thin and soft with washes. 

Kyle watched him cry, swallowing before turning slowly to him and thumbing them away. The bathroom was quiet, taut with the unfinished fight, the tired truce. Connor curled his fingers around Kyle's wrist, took a shaky breath, and dared.

"Sleep with Roy and Jason."

Kyle startled into a laugh, head rocking back, but it was all angles and disbelief instead of joy. "What?"

Connor repeated himself, core tight as he stood his ground. "Sleep with Roy and Jason. They can give you what I can't. I know that they are... capable. I know that you would-"

"Wait. Are you _serious_?" 

"You could be touched the way you need. I know that you find Jason attractive."

"Stop fucking talking right fucking now."

"Kyle, it would-"

"God _damn it_. Connor. _Stop_."

Connor was panting, breathless in the bathroom and shaking with the terror of what he was suggesting, of the anger in Kyle's voice, the rage on his face. He stood steady, braced and didn't back down. He knew what he was risking. He knew it's worth. 

Kyle was incandescent in his anger, muscle in his jaw a flicker that rolled as he ground his teeth. His eyes looked golden, locked on Connor's face. He was the perfect picture of endless will, of a Lantern. Kyle carried the power to create with a thought. He looked like he could destroy worlds. He could destroy Connor’s with a word. Connor wondered if this is what the universe saw when Kyle swam through the black. 

"I _love_ you, Kyle," he spoke, daring this man with his fragile heart. 

"No." Kyle shook his head and reached, fisting his hands in the soft cotton of Connor's shirt, pushing his knuckles against the flat of his stomach. "That's not the answer. You don't... it's not."

"You deserve to be fulfilled."

"You _think_? God, Connor. Come on." Kyle huffed and pushed their foreheads together, eyes closed as he shivered. "Just because you don't fulfill every human need I could possibly have doesn't mean you aren't enough. Do you think your Dad fulfills every need Dinah has?"

"That is not the best example," Connor whispered, unable to stop the chance for levity. "She has... _friends_."

"What the fuck is wrong with your family? Okay, fine, maybe not a good example," Kyle agreed. "But fucking your brother shouldn't really an option."

"I trust him. He would... he would be good to you," Connor replied, hands settling lightly on Kyle's hips, stroking carefully up his sides and back down. He loved the feel of him, the heat of his skin, the hard cut of muscle, the fragile flex of his ribs. "They said yes."

"You already asked them."

"Yes."

Kyle inhaled sharply and kissed Connor, mouth quick and hard before pulling back. "I can't right now."

"Ky-," Connor started, but Kyle kissed him again, softer and somehow sad. 

"Come to bed, Connor." Kyle turned, leaving him behind in the bathroom.

*

Kyle went boneless and Roy had a brief second of blinding feral desire, a reckless wildfire that wanted to simply take. He closed his eyes, unzipped his jeans, and hefted his dick from the denim. He squeezed himself roughly, forcing the flash of pain to temper the arousal. He leaned, snatching a condom from the nightstand and tearing it open. He straightened, rolling it onto his dick with a practiced hand, almost startling when there was a tender touch to the back of his knee. He glanced down. 

Jason had squirmed enough to get his hands loose. He’d struggled against the construct cuffs, taking the brief second when Kyle’s concentration flared to reach backwards, to reach for _Roy_. Roy trembled, heart stuttering at the soft fumbling of those strong fingers. 

‘ _I see you_ ,’ Roy mouthed, barely forming the words around his breath. They were only for Jason. He dropped a hand, squeezing Jason’s thick wrist gently. It was a soft grounding touch. He flicked his eyes to catch the slippery hot gaze that Jason attempted to focus on him. Jason was trying to find his center in the swollen endless sex in the glowing green and darkness. The touch was Jason’s answer: _mine_.

Roy held that gaze and pushed Kyle's face further into the sheets as he leaned his weight forward, rubbing the head of his dick against where Kyle’s body was stretched for him. He fucked into the impossible tight heat with a slow patient press, rocking into him in inches. Kyle shook through it, a soft choking noise that wasn't his name, wasn't Jason's, and Roy sighed as his hips settled tight against the curve of his ass. He squeezed Jason's wrist again and then reached over Kyle’s back to where Jason panted against the sheets to thumb a soft careful touch to the angry curve of his thick black brow, loving the way Jason's eyes fluttered closed. His boy loved to be pet, to be palmed and touched in slow slides of skin on skin, stunned and shaking at the attention. 

“That’s it,” Roy whispered when he felt Kyle relax around him, the soft tremors along his spine stilling as his body squeezed and pulled at him. "So beautiful."

*

“I swear to God, Harper,” Jason muttered, leaning forward on the table as Kyle watched from behind a sip of his beer. It always felt like they forgot he was in the room, like at some point their world narrowed and existed only for them. Connor had left him to pack the leftovers to take home and load the dishwasher. He was visible through the entryway to Roy’s kitchen. In the dining room, Roy was laughing brightly, head tossed back and gracelessly handsome in motion. Kyle shifted, twirling his beer on the table, making small overlapping rings of condensation. He didn’t miss when Jason shook his head and hooked a finger into the collar of Roy’s ratty band t-shirt to tug him closer. “The shit that comes out of your fucking mouth.”

“I thought you were more interested in what goes _in_ my mouth, Jaybird.” Roy leaned forward easily, matching Jason’s light glare with a delighted smirk. This was Roy’s house, a foxed edge craftsman that butted against a small wooded plot of national forest with a hand built deck, exposed wood beams in the ceiling, and set stone fireplace. It matched him, rough edged but comfortable. Jason lingered in the space like gunsmoke, a knife here, a gotham knights jersey over the hook in the bathroom, stacks of battered paperbacks spattered carelessly on end tables, kitchen counters, and bookshelves. It felt more intimate here when they muttered hot barbs at each other.

Kyle flushed, glancing over at where Connor was packing the leftovers away into neat tupperware containers on the island. 

“It _is_ one of my favorite ways to shut you up,” Jason agreed, wetting his lips with a calculated slowness. Kyle exhaled, caught in the wet slip, the flash of pink and the electric promise. He blinked, stilled mid-sip by the thought of Jason’s mouth opening in a painful sort of bliss. It was followed quickly the image of Roy on his knees. The sex of it was startlingly clear where it burned across his brain. He could see it, Jason fucking Roy’s mouth in a slow rhythm of cut muscle, the thick twisting strength of his forearms flexing, the sloppy bitten red of his lower lip a temptation, shiny with spit. Kyle was thinking about Jason’s brawling grace translated into a sinuous flex of hips. He could almost hear the low choked noise that Roy would make, slutty and eager. He kept his beer against his lip, worried that if he moved it would telegraph his thoughts. He shouldn’t be thinking about this. He shouldn’t be considering this.

“Just that one?” Roy arched a brow and shifted forward on his chair, knees bracketing Jason’s as he set his pale hands on those thick thighs and squeezed. They’d been side by side through dinner, Connor in the seat closest to the kitchen and Kyle left at the far head of the table to watch Roy’s hands find Jason like the tide, in slow creeping touches until he could pull him closer, pull him under.

A snap of plastic pulled Kyle’s eyes back to the pass through. Connor had clipped the lid closed on the lasagna they were taking home with them, the layered eggplant and bechamel losing out in popularity to the fettuccine bolognese Jason had made for the meat eaters. He bustled through the task of cleaning up, shoulders shifting in a soft jade green shirt that he thought looked good with his favorite pair of brown corduroys. Kyle watched him smile to himself, glancing around to collect up the dishes. Connor wasn’t thinking about fucking Jason over the kitchen table. He would never consider it.

Kyle had been half hard through dinner, slapped around by his own desire and forcing down food. He’d considered the table, noting a few scratches in the wood. He’d wondered if Jason had left them, feral as Roy fingered him open. He’d wondered if they’d fucked here. He’d considered how many times. He’d let himself hope they would later. Arousal had kept him quiet as he ate, careful to keep his thoughts and his gaze to himself. If he looked, he looked at Connor. The sight made his mouth water as he’d stared across the dinner to where Connor was smiling, brilliantly beautiful and serene as he popped a bit of bread roll into his mouth.

“You okay there, Kyle?” He realized he wasn’t staring at Connor now.

Roy was looking at him over Jason’s shoulder, eyes vivid and blue as an autumn sky. He’d worn his red hair in a low caught ponytail, a few loose strands tucked easily behind one ear. Kyle had watched Jason reach, watched Roy tilt his head into the touch and kiss his wrist absently like it was easy, like it was normal. 

“What?” Kyle asked, caught off guard. Jason turned, frowning at him and Kyle frowned back. “ _What_?”

“Stop eye fucking Roy, asshole.”

“I wasn’t... I wasn’t _eyefucking_ Roy.”

“You calling me a liar?” Jason twisted in his chair, stacking one forearm on the back as he sniped at Kyle with a stupid smirk that made him look dangerous. His scarred fingers dangled loosely, relaxed and distractingly elegant. It made him look-

“Do I look stupid? Actually, don’t answer that.” He rolled his eyes, shaking his head and taking a quick swig of his beer. It tasted thin, overly sweet like a cheap domestic. “If I was going to say something I would have started with your shit taste in beer.”

“I told you to get the craft lager, babe,” Roy huffed, voice a low tease as Jason frowned. 

“You don’t get to be a snob if you don’t drink, babe,” Jason muttered before lifting one loose finger to point at Kyle. “Fuck your craft bullshit. What’s wrong with-?”

“It’s sugar water with delusions of alcohol,” Kyle snorted, latching desperately onto the conversation instead of the idle thoughts of Roy slipping from the chair to slip Jason’s dick into his mouth at the dinner table. 

“It’s fucking beer, Kyle. When did you get all fancy?”

“Probably in college. You’d know how that goes, but _oh wait_ , you were dead. I keep forgetting. You should remind me again. Hey, Connor? Did you know Jason died?”

Connor, voice calm from where he was stacking dishes into the dishwasher, replied. “I had heard, yes.”

“Connor, I like you. Stay out of this.” Jason pulled back, shuffling the chair so it was turned in his direction. He leaned forward, forearms draped over his knees and strong hands loosely linked. Kyle felt his skin prickle, heartbeat kicking into something sweeter than fight or flight. Jason was broad with a soft sulky mouth, thickly lashed eyes, and a specific kind of sex appeal. Kyle exhaled at the thought of those scarred fingers on his throat, holding his wrists down, of the threat in front of him. “You went to _art school_. Pretty sure they just taught you how to smoke weed and suck dick.”

Roy raised his hand. “Oh! I want to go to art school.”

Kyle could feel the eyeroll Jason managed to squash. The dining room was a small space filled with the live edged table and four chairs. They’d set the two extra against the wall. A low wrought iron chandelier crowned the table, a neat rectangle topped with a line of low voltage edison bulbs. Kyle was focusing on everything but the way his heart was beating, a sweet anticipatory tempo. He tilted his head, lifting the bottled beer to touch his lips, both eyebrows raised. “Worth every penny,” he murmured, taking the next sip like a dare, like a filthy promise of what his mouth could do.

“I’ve got a dollar,” Jason drawled, unimpressed. “What’ll that get me?”

“That’s not enough for me to even bother opening my pants.”

“Oh yeah? Expensive.” Jason leaned to the side pulling his phone out of his back pocket. “Whatever, you basic art bitches will do anything for some pumpkin spice. I think I’ve got a coupon.”

Kyle very vividly imagined shoving his fingers into Jason’s mouth, inhaling sharply as the other man scratched his fingers back through his curls. He thought about it, thought about hooking a thumb over the bottom row of his teeth and pulling him down, getting him face down and restlessly aroused, hard and leaking with his thick cock caught in a cockring. He’d be Kyle’s to tease and...

“What will five dollar’s off at Sun Dollars buy me?” Jason’s smile was sharp and filled with a dark undercurrent that Kyle could almost taste. “ A sad handjob in the hallway?”

“Jesus, Jason. You’d almost be likable, but you just keep opening your mouth,” Kyle hissed, voice thick as Jason’s eyes flicked up to his, taunting from under his lashes.

“Maybe you could help him shut it.” 

Kyle startled, heart catching in a bright moment of panic, like he’d been caught, like he’d actually leaned forward and taken what Jason seemed to be offering. He looked to where Connor had spoken. 

Connor was loading the dishwasher, nonplussed and careful as he stacked the plates with quick hands. He glanced up at Kyle, just one soft touch of his beautiful green eyed gaze, like fingers to his cheek, and nodded.

“I-” Kyle heard a sound, a helpless hot little groan and realized it had come from him only in the moment he turned and snagged Jason by the back of the neck and shut him up, biting at his bottom lip and feeding him another soft hot sound with a slippery touch of tongue. It was there now, in the world, his want. He could feel it pulse in his dick, aching as Jason pulled back with a startled gasp.

The silence felt like drowning, heartbeat pounding the mistake in double time, bombarding him with everything he’d fucked up with one moment. He panted, terrified with his hand still curled possessively into the back of Jason’s hair, the heat of his scalp keeping the strands warm and soft in his hold.

“Kyle,” Roy said, voice a quiet reprimand brimming with a deep easy command he’d never heard on the other man before. It sounded like purpose and direction, like a careful coaching hand on his shoulder. It made something in Kyle go liquid, wishing for him to be trained the right way. He glanced up, chin quivering in his panic. Roy looked calm, self assured and unbothered in the control he had of this moment. He smiled, indulgent, and then winked. “ _Ask first_.”

“Can... can I?” He tore his gaze from Roy, finding the one person he knew he would stop for. Connor’s mouth was open, eyes wide. He looked startled. “Co-”

“Yes.” Connor nodded, fervent. “Please. Enjoy this.”

Roy sniffed. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up.” Jason sounded like a snarl and kissed like he was fighting. Kyle heard his chair move with the force of it, barely noted the muffled conversation happening in the kitchen, and then Jason cupped him through his jeans and all he could feel was Jason’s broad palm and the soft sin of his mouth as they lost themselves in a kiss.

*

Roy started to fuck Kyle with purpose, pulling his hands back to curl firmly at his hips, holding him still - holding him _down_ \- as he rolled his body in a steady rough pace. The tempo was marked by the sharp slap of skin on skin that shoved Kyle forward on the sheets. The construct fucking Jason matched the pace and Roy bit his lip, wishing for a moment he could - wishing he could fuck them both at the same time, superhuman and powerful, careful and permissive of their pleasure. "Suck him."

His world shivered almost white when both Jason and Kyle struggled to follow the order. Kyle managed to roll Jason onto his side and higher up the bed with a glowing pulse of constructs, mouthing along his swollen length before getting his lips around the head. Jason shocked, mouth dropping open and filled just as suddenly with green fingers, then more, a thick green shape stroking over his tongue and stretching his lips. Kyle was gagging himself, a desperate needy action, and Roy had a moment of perfect clarity.

These men, powerful, dangerous, willful, and so very strong, trusted him - a heady and impossible trust. They trusted _him_ to let them be broken open, to let them be vulnerable. They trusted him to take them outside of themselves.

*

Their apartment was quiet when Connor made it home. He barely remembered the uber, staring out the window as the driver prattled, holding the leftover lasagna between his palms. He barely remembered unlocking the door in a loose distracted haze. He noted that he should be present, that he should be focused on the present moment as he’d been taught, but he slipped off his shoes and moved to the couch, a blank between hovering in the living room and whether he’d stored the leftovers properly. He didn’t remember opening the refrigerator door. He frowned, pacing to the kitchen to check and turn off the overhead light before moving back to the couch. It creaked when he sat. 

Kyle had kissed Jason. His mouth had looked hungry; he’d looked so desperate with his eyes screwed shut and his nose smashed to Jason’s cheek. 

Connor turned the television on, eyes unfocused. The remote clattered onto the coffee table when he tossed it away. A commercial rasped through the seven second cycle, light flashing and changing the colors reflected on the ceiling. The evening huddled in long shadows that blurred at the edges where the screen glowed. The commercial ended and a late-night talk show returned. The host smiled. Connor changed the channel to something old, innocuous, unnecessary. He didn’t need to follow a conversation; he wasn’t watching. It dropped out of his focus and into background noise, just a subtle chatter that he’d turned low. 

He stretched out on the couch, one bare foot still on the floor. Connor gritted his teeth as he tried to get comfortable, something in his heartbeat, in his skin felt restless, frustrated and distracted. 

Kyle had leaned back and Connor had stared in the slippery feeling silence, breathless and aware that this was the moment. This was the thing that he’d been missing. It felt like a sweet heat rumbling over his collarbones, tripping and stroking down his arms. He’d said yes and Kyle had looked like a starving man offered a feast.

“Oh.”

He pulled his shirt up, letting his fingertips trace over his stomach, the light cautious touch a tickle, a careful curious tease as he blew out a breath. Their living room was a patina of soft evening shadows that huddled around the curated clutter. They decorated the living room with different bits of Kyle’s art. There was a canvas on the wall with the suggestion of motion in deep brushstrokes, the colors bold. An art desk sat in the corner, facing out towards the street to take advantage of the constant natural light. A single succulent was kept in a repurposed tomato paste can next to the colored pencil carousel- the yellow and red wrapper a pretty contrast to the thick round leaves. Kyle liked to sketch it as warm up. There were so many pictures of it throughout their apartment. 

Connor knew what Kyle’s mouth tasted like when he would look up, half paying attention to Connor’s kiss. It made him smile.

Kyle would hunch over his drawings, shoulders shifting as he sketched. Connor appreciated the shape of him, the line of his neck, the strong span of his shoulders, the delicate angle of shoulder blades, the high arch of his feet, the way his ankles were darker and the soles of his feet pale. Connor would linger for hours, meditating on a strip of beautiful tanned skin peaking over the waist of his jeans. Kyle would touch his tongue to his top lip, lost in his focus.

Connor firmed his touch to his own stomach as he pushed his heels into the cushions, stretching his toes against the far arm. He squirmed, the stretch sweet. He dipped his fingers under the waist of his pants like a question. This was how need felt for Connor: second hand and accidental. It was self contained.

(It wasn’t sex. Not the way Kyle drew sex in the line of longing in a mouth against the curve of a shoulder. It was sex in the impression of yearning told in the grip of a hand where it dimpled the skin of a hip and pulled someone close. It was the intention not the bruise. Moments in time. Mouths. Cocks. Cunts. Slick fucked lips. The head of a dick caught between the weight of round tits. Sex. Sucking. Fucking. Dirty _filthy_ words that Connor let himself indulge in. They had meaning in abstract that sent a quiver under his skin. He focused on the memory of drawings- the intimate shocking temptation of spread knees and long arching necks, a twist, a stretch of lips, fingers being suckled. He focused on this slow twisting arousal- ephemeral and exceptional in its aesthetic.) 

Connor whined a soft noise and pushed his hand completely under the waist of his pants, the knap of the corduroy taut against his wrist. He tucked his fingers under the elastic of his briefs. It was a skating touch, barely tracing the line of his dick where it was hard. He reveled in the impression of sex, the feel of it, the way it ignited people around him, made them stunning and beautiful to watch. He didn’t think about his dick. He didn’t think about his hand. He refused the mechanics of his own body, lost a half step to the right in memory.

Jason had groaned. The noise of it had shocked into Connor’s lungs. This is what pleasure sounded like, this was bodies together. He’d been staring, helpless as it happened. The way Jason had opened to it, the way they had crashed back together. The way he’d pulled Kyle closer. The way his fingers went grasping and hungry.

The throw pillow under his head smelled like Kyle’s shampoo, a crisp spicy smell and Connor turned, panting into the canvas of the couch. He shifted, hips restless and frustrated. It was stifled, the tight awkward rub. He felt caught and pulled his hand back, unbuttoning his pants and shoving them and his underwear off his hips and onto his thighs with a sharp annoyed sound. He didn’t look down, didn’t need to see how hard he was at the suggestion of what was happening in Roy’s house, in his bed, in his hands. He was hard thinking about the way Kyle would look, mouth open and snarling those aching noises that peppered the air.

Would Kyle’s eyes close when someone fucked him? Would he shake? Would he make those low perfect sounds? Would-? 

Connor had seen him in the shower, had watched from where he’d glimpsed Kyle fucking his own fist with quick vicious strokes, working himself into a tempting tense twist of need that curled Connor’s toes.

He knew Kyle’s weight, the feel of him pressing Connor into the couch with all of him. He knew the heat of his skin, the feel of his hands, the soft sweet way he kissed. He thought about the way Kyle said his name like a prayer, like something poetic. Connor throbbed, distant from the pleasure, the tight ache of it twisting and curling him. He was shaking, pulled thrumming and taut. He bowed, arching into it- the enveloping emotion, lost to a scattering snapshot of sex, a retrospective tour of things he could place into purpose.

Connor felt like a voyeur in his own sex. He wanted the impression of intimacy without the messy reality of the act.

He frowned at a thread of guilt, fingers slicking as he pulsed precome, the sound of his hand striping his cock a quick slap. He wished he could tape this for Kyle, show him the curving thick line of his dick against his palm. He thumbed at his foreskin, gasping. 

Would Kyle hold Jason by the hair and shove his dick over his tongue? Would he-?

The world faded out, the noise of the trains a low hum under the white noise from the television. It wasn’t important. Connor kept his eyes screwed shut, focused on the fantasy: Kyle face down as someone fucked him, Kyle’s lips soft around someone’s fingers, Kyle’s knees pushed open. It was heady, the thought of Kyle letting Connor see without touching him.

“Oh,” he heard himself breathe, a soft moan that didn’t sound like him. It sounded rasping and breathless. He stroked harder, body locking up, eager as it raced towards the edge of something. He raced where his reluctant body had hidden the warm syrup of pleasure that pooled inside him. “ _Oh_.”

The clock on the wall ticked slow easy seconds and the fridge hummed to life after a jolting noise from the ice machine. He let himself try something. 

“Kyle.” His voice sounded lost, wondering. “Kyle, _please_.”

He was startled by his own orgasm, eyes screwed shut as it shocked through him. He panted, blissed and clinging to the memory of how Kyle pronounced his name like a moan, the way he would roll and rub the head of his dick between Connor’s thighs before he was awake enough to feel guilty. He thought about Kyle as he came over his stomach, choking and almost violent on the couch. 

He kept his eyes closed, shivering and panting as he stroked himself again- startled at the reckless sweet aftershock. 

“Oh,” Connor sighed, alone in a lingering comfortable quiet. 

*

“Oh,” Roy breathed, heart throbbing warm and wondering at the feel. This was his bliss, being needed, being useful. “So _good_ , you feel so good. God, you’re- _fuck_ , you’re so tight, Kyle. You look so fucking good on my dick.” Roy tipped back, leaning his weight and shifting his feet to find the right angle, the right way to brace himself to fuck Kyle senseless on the tangled sheets. He kept talking, the careful muttered praise, the filth, the sex. If he could find it, if he could do this just right, Kyle’s will would bend, flowing around the edges of Roy’s own to submit and give him exactly the perfect moment. It was the moment Kyle flushed hard, pulling off Jason’s dick with a wet sound to noise brokenly against the skin of Jason’s hip, lost and shaking with want. Everything throbbed green. Jason was shaking, taking the endless sex of the constructs with soft vowels. Kyle was a taut sweat slicked line under his hands, writhing back against him. Roy could see the after-burned image of them when he closed his eyes.

“You’re so close,” Roy gritted out, knowing that Kyle was a tool at this point, a body that was filled with power and purpose for him to direct. He bent forward, tangling his fingers into Kyle’s hair to tug his head back, tug it up so he could bite lightly at his jaw and find the delicate curl of his ear. “Let go.”

Kyle choked, fingers scrambling as he found his own dick, stroking himself roughly. “Oh god.”

“You can come, Kyle,” he breathed. Roy’s body felt flush, overstimulated, but he focused. This was important. He took aim, took a breath, and loosed. “ _Do it_. Connor’s waiting.”

Kyle seized, choking around the way the room went green, blissed out and a full press of something like power. It snapped, light snuffing out as he came. Jason choked a cry as the cockring disappeared, body jerking, smearing and pulsing helplessly around a choking groan of Roy’s name as he curled tight - lost in his release. 

*

Roy felt Jason slip into the shower behind him as he shampooed his hair. His eyes were screwed shut, a brief burn of soap when he squinted forcing them closed again. He spit slightly, rubbing his jaw against the wet skin of his shoulder. “No flame-thrower, right?”

Jason hummed a noncommittal sound and pressed against his back, rubbing the thick line of his dick to nudge at Roy’s balls. He was taller than Roy, built for power. He was an incredible touch of muscle and vague threat that thrilled Roy every time. Jason touched his mouth to the curve of Roy’s shoulder, it felt thoughtful until he moved, curling one thickly muscled arm around his waist to tug him close, grip implacable.

“Oh, hey,” Roy breathed, ducking his head under the spray to rinse and shivering when the fingers of Jason’s free hand slipped over his wet hair, helping rinse with a gentle scratch at his scalp. There was a heady intimacy to this touch that Roy could drown in, but the arm to his waist signaled Jason’s unspoken need. 

He scooped his hair back, swiping at his face with a quick palm. He was aware of the restless shift of Jason’s hips, the way he was sliding the length of his dick between Roy’s thighs, the blunt head nudging against his balls. 

“Jaybird?” Jason reached to touch and Roy stilled as his strong fingers brushed along his forehead, smoothing the wet tendrils back and then skating purposefully down, trailing thoughtfully over his shoulders before dropping lower. Roy threw a hand to slap against the wall, steadying himself when Jason took him in hand, stroking once. “Good morning to me.” 

“I don’t want anyone to fuck you,” Jason grumbled, voice soft and almost petulant against the skin at the back of his neck. It had been over two months since Roy had asked, a silent stretch of time he’d given Jason to think. Jason was done thinking apparently. “Understand?” He shifted, moving quickly to reach between them to tuck his cock into the crease of Roy’s ass, rutting there almost languidly with a slow rock of hips. He kept Roy locked to him with the strong arm and huffed a shaky breath as he took him in hand again. “Only me.”

“We negotiating?” Roy asked, eyes slipping closed as he let Jason use him, let him rub against his ass, stroke his dick, and be present as Jason spoke.

“Yes.”

“Okay. Are you saying yes to sleeping with Kyle?”

Jason bit down at the thick line of muscle in Roy’s shoulder, a purposeful touch that he worried gently. He was leaving marks. Roy dropped his head as his thighs shook, patient around his own arousal for Jason to speak. “Yes.”

“Okay.” Roy blew out a breath. “Gonna let me turn around and talk about this, Jaybird?”

“No,” Jason nipped at his ear, keeping that slow steady thrust that teased at him, teased at something possessive and claiming. “Going to fuck you first.” 

“Jay,” Roy managed, forcing himself to focus even as Jason worked the head of his dick with a maddening grip. “This... fuck, this is important. We need to talk about this.”

“We will. Spread your legs.” The tile squeaked under his bare feet as Roy complied, calves bunching as he rolled his hips as much as he could, feeling when Jason pulled back enough to press against him. The pressure was sweet and heady, but incomplete. He could feel the blunt head, could imagine the stretch of it, the raw ache it would drag into him. Jason was built big. He reached back, grabbing Jason’s hip and pulling him physically to breach, eyes rolling at the hot stretch. 

“You’re too important to me to fuck this up with sex,” he whispered, voice carrying over the hiss of the shower. 

“Roy,” Jason growled, the vowel of his name drawn rough and deep in his chest. He moved and braced at the rough grip on his hips. He didn’t shove, didn’t slam forward, just pulled Roy onto him in a slow almost gentle press that left Roy scrambling at the feeling, filled and wanting in the hot steamy air. “Tell me what-”

“Move,” Roy answered, head turned to pant against his shoulder, to breathe Jason’s name in a quiet ache when he did as asked. It was an agonizing kindness as he stroked out, slow around a hissed breath before fucking deep with a shove that rattled through Roy’s bones. It felt permanent. It felt profound. It felt like the rough stamp of claim. Jason moved again, again, and Roy heard the noises he made echo in the tight tiled space, heard the soft meaningless vowels that he choked at each sharp thrust. “That’s it,” he managed. “Own me.”

Jason’s teeth clamped onto his shoulder again, tongue moving in a restless taste. He soothed the bruise with a soft kiss, marking it with one simple word. “Mine.”

Roy slitted his eyes open, watching Jason over his shoulder, the ripple of muscle, the wet plastered beauty of his curls slippery and cupped to his face, the clump of his lashes, spiked and dripping as he maintained the brutal pace. He was the stunning beauty of an explosion, the wild impossible heat and pressure that wrecked what it touched and left it forever changed. 

“Gonna fuck you later, Jay,” he told him. “Going to open you up and wedge in. Hold your thighs open and make a mess inside you, touch it with my fingers and keep you wet with me until tomorrow. You want that?”

“Yes,” Jason breathed, pace stumbling and edging into desperation. 

“Good boy,” Roy exhaled, licking water from his lips. “Tell me, what do you need?”

Jason flushed, ducking his head and picking up the pace, the slap almost frantic before he reached, spreading his hand over Roy’s chest, palm wide over his heart. “Only me,” he whispered. “You only come for me.”

“Okay.”

“Promise?” Jason’s head ducked, the eye contact too much for a moment and pressed his forehead between Roy’s shoulders, fucking him with abandon. “Only me.”

“Promise,” Roy managed, wrapping a hand around Jason’s wrist to squeeze a quick reassurance of touch before pulling it lower. “Now, fucking touch me.”

*

Roy pulled out, gritting his teeth as he shivered, the air cold on his dick. He forced himself to breathe and tuck his own pleasure away; it was secondary. He panted, flushed and out of breath as he forced his fingers to relax, to unclench from where they were bruising tight on Kyle’s hip, pulling at his hair. He huffed a feeble laugh, arms shaking as he ducked to press a soft kiss to the back of Kyle’s neck before reaching to find Jason’s skin. He needed to give Jason something to catch, something to hold on to while he came down. 

“Hngh,” Kyle breathed, the noise was almost a word. He pulled his arms back to fold under his head, rolling his shoulders and sucking his teeth with a small grimace. 

Roy smiled down at him. “Welcome back,” he murmured around another soft-mouthed kiss to Kyle’s skin.

“That was...”

“Shhh,” Roy snorted, touching a soft bite to the thick muscle flexing under his mouth as Kyle moved, tasting salt before rolling onto his back in the space between Jason and Kyle. He let his arm sprawl, finding the curve at the small of Jason’s back and rubbing his thumb in a soft arc against his sweat slick skin. Jason’s eyes weren’t open yet, but he reached blindly to find Roy’s skin, still a little lost to the hazy space he found in sex. Roy would wait for him, patient and in love. He smiled at the ceiling. “You don’t have to tell me. It was awesome.”

Kyle tossed him a startled look that split down the center into an amused eye roll. He almost managed a laugh, shifting and groaning instead. “Thank you.”

Roy nodded, stroking Jason’s skin with light fingers as he let a hot look slip into his gaze, let just a bit of lingering command thread into his voice. “Anytime.”

Kyle shivered at the held look, throat working as he swallowed. It felt cupped close and Roy saw the moment Kyle needed someone else. It looked wet eyed like someone longing for home. “I need to go.”

“Hey,” Roy breathed, before leaning in and catching Kyle’s mouth in a soft kiss. He wasn’t sure what he was saying, but Kyle seemed to understand. 

“Yeah.” 

The room went green and Roy turned away as the mattress rocked. Jason was watching him, eyes slitted open and intent in the gathering dark. “Hey beautiful,” Roy said, voice choking in his chest at the sight. He settled back, reaching to pet the sweat damp tangle of his black hair back, fingers gentle as they stroked lower to rub at his back. He followed an easy loop with his hand, patient as Jason surfaced. “You with me?”

“Always,” Jason answered, voice shot and overfull.

“I fucking love you.”

“Sap,” Jason smiled, tucking a loose almost kiss to Roy’s wrist as it passed and a blush into the tangle of sheets immediately afterward. Roy grinned, alight with the bright feel of this incredible trust between them, the welling joy it brought. “Come down here. I’m cold and someone took all the blankets.”

*

Connor was waiting for him when he made it home. Kyle paused at the window, swallowing around the thick swollen emotion that clawed at him, violent as it howled- dangerous and destructive. It told him that he’d done too much, taken too much. It told him he couldn’t have this. He ducked inside, he would be brave. "Connor?"

Connor Hawke had kissed him first. Kyle had been laughing at something Guy had said while covered in noxious space goo, explaining the joke as they sprawled out on the soft green grass of the park. He knows now that there is a play area around the tracing cement path, tucked under the elevation and prickling out the side of the hill. He knows that there is a dog park, a tennis court, and a small amphitheater built into another clearing. He knew that the parking lot was usually full of SUVs with stick figure families and the soft wagging tales of middle class golden retrievers in bandanas. It hadn't been his first choice of parks, but it was now. At the time, it had been the closest to where he'd found Connor that day, fresh from the icy endless cold of space and desperate for something welcoming and warm.

Kyle had been leaning back on his palms, head rolled to the side as he spoke, barefoot and a tumble of legs next to Connor's gentle center, folded legs, folded hands, and the smile that he unfurled just for Kyle.

He was sitting like that now, back straight and hands cupped in his lap in their bed. The sheets were rumpled, the duvet a cream cotton quietly striped camel colored threads. It smelled like sandalwood and shea butter, soft and smooth as skin warmed stones. It smelled like Connor and Kyle dropped through the window and dropped his defenses.

"Hey," he breathed, careful and terrified that Connor wouldn't want him any more, wouldn't want the reckless sin of his skin or the tarnished burn of his mouth. "Do... should I-?"

Connor exhaled, the deep centered breath at the end of meditation and smiled at him. 

That day had felt like any other, just the shiver of green leaves, of summer pressing warm and weighty against his hair. He could feel his hair going warm, lit by the rolling brightness of the day. He'd wished he'd worn shorts, worn a shirt he could leave unbuttoned. He'd wondered how Connor always looked so cool, collected in a plain white t-shirt and linen pants. He remembers that he'd thought his curls looked beautiful glowing in the sun, a wild halo grown out from his last cut. He remembers that he always thought Connor was beautiful.

Looking at Connor settled in their bed, quiet and patient, folded intention and an undefended smile, he realized he was so much more.

"You're my home," he whispered, pleading without meaning to.

"What are you doing over there?" Connor asked, a small warm tease that choked a gusty wet laugh from Kyle. "Come to bed."

He'd been stilled when Connor had touched his jaw, blond brows drawn in a soft confused look as he stared at Kyle. He'd been melted by it, liquid in the heat that it rubbed into him with a tempered patience, like pulling the sheen from worn wood. He hadn't even asked what was happening. He'd already known.

Everyone instinctively knows what home feels like.

Kyle crossed the dark of space, crossed the universe, crossed the endless span of the cosmos to find Connor Hawke. Tonight, all he needed to do was cross the room. 

Connor had slipped his mouth against his like a question in the sunshine, a soft touch of plush lips and the bump of his nose. It didn't feel like a question, it felt like a book opening to a well loved passage. Kyle had felt his eyelashes brush his skin, had felt the way Connor's fingers had tensed, just a tremble of touch along his jaw. 

He remembers thinking that Connor had always been brave.

"I don't..."

"I love you without complication," Connor interrupted, reaching and tucking his fingers into the belt loop of Kyle's jeans. He unfolded, shifting to sit on the edge of their bed and squeeze Kyle with his knees. He pushed a soft reverent kiss to his stomach, pausing there. "Without condition. Undefended."

Kyle let himself have this, let himself cup the back of Connor's head and stare down at him. Connor's chin felt sharp when he leaned his gaze back and smiled up at him. "Connor."

"Did you enjoy yourself?" Connor asked, leaning back and pulling Kyle to kneel into the bedsprings before tugging to tumble him into the bed. He curled close, touching Kyle with dry warm hands in a soft stroke over his side. 

" _Uh_."

"I will take that as a yes."

"Are you sure?"

Connor held his eyes and Kyle knew that in that second Connor was thinking of that day in the park, of the breathless terror Kyle had felt at the surety in Connor's mouth, in the way one touch had changed everything. 

He'd asked Connor the same thing that day, whispered and wide eyed in that golden summer sunshine. "Are you sure?"

Connor's answer had never changed. "Yes."

**Author's Note:**

> *makes slappy table hands over kind comments*


End file.
